DrPraetor wrote:Um... what?
This here is what I was responding to:
DrPraetor wrote:I think, in order to hold together, turning to Chaos is an affliction rather than something anyone rationally chooses to do.
So a hazard of practicing healing magic is, under stress, you might go insane, and start spreading plagues and worshipping the Great Horned Rat. This doesn't happen because you were persuaded on the merits by a Skaven plague monk, but because you went mad.
This frees you from the requirement of having insane gods of grimdark and then claiming that people choose to worship them (for, like, power or something?) which makes zero sense in Warhammer.
Your later reference to "Evil Spock and Evil Kirk" made it clear that your concept of turning to Chaos doesn't reduce you to cardboard antagonism, but I still disagree with your afore-quoted position that joining Team Chaos need exclusively be the result of insanity or some other involuntary condition.
It's all well and good to have
some people on Team Chaos be totally unhinged people who got their brains fried by a page from the Necronomicon or something, but if that's the only kind of person on Team Chaos, Team Chaos is pretty boring. To be sure, people who have been zapped with the Evil Beam are more engaging if they are still capable of carrying on a conversation and acting with some degree of restraint or subtlety, but you're needlessly cutting off a very fruitful narrative branch if you declare that no one could ever end up on Team Chaos for reasons related to their own motivations and emotional states without being zapped with the Evil Beam.
The problem you're addressing with this mandatory insanity ("This frees you from the requirement of having insane gods of grimdark and then claiming that people choose to worship them (for, like, power or something?) which makes zero sense in Warhammer.") is a real one, but your solution is no good. It makes a lot more sense to address the "like power or something?" question, by explicitly filling in the reasons why someone might freely choose to worship Chaos.
I think it's eminently reasonable that someone from an oppressed minority (as mentioned earlier - women, LGBTs, minorities) might choose Team Chaos if that meant a chance to earn power and respect on their own merits, in exchange for being "forced" to help tear down the society that hates them and that they hate right back.
Yoda may be right that the Dark Side will dominate your destiny
once you start down the path, but as Obi-Wan said, "Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force." You can't have seduction without some kind of enticement. Obi-Wan did not say "Vader rolled double sixes on a Force check, got Perils of the Warp, and was mind-raped into the service of the Dark Side of the Force." Let's ignore what the content of that seduction may have been, because Natalie Portman is a pretty poor excuse for burning the galaxy.
DrPraetor wrote:Hell, Return of the Jedi has an entire 20 minutes devoted to the Emperor baiting Luke into striking him down in a fit of rage, because if he does, he will turn to the dark side, right? Since turning to the dark side is pretty clearly a bad idea, the seductive power of the dark side is quite clearly a supernatural phenomenon.
Here is where you are absolutely wrong. There is nothing supernatural whatsoever about goading a guy into getting so pissed off that he does something his better self knows is wrong. That's exactly why the lure of the Dark Side is so dangerous - the fall simply consists of giving in to your own hate, rage, fear, or despair and letting those feelings guide you into doing something unforgivable. You stay on the Dark Side by rationalizing your selfish and destructive actions, aided by the elation that comes from exercising power and imposing your will on others. This is why Sith are such assholes.
Luke could resist the pull of the Dark Side because he recognized that his own anger in the face of Vader's threat to Leia was about to lead him to murder his own father, and he chose to reject that path. Once Luke overcame this final temptation, the Emperor knew he had nothing else to try to bait Luke with, and acknowledged that Luke had truly become a Jedi. Out of options, he then decided to make Luke ride the lightning.