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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6752282" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Having known people who went through stuff like this, I don't think it's necessarily the total absence of an a priori commitment. Instead, I would call it the "Jedi weakness" phenomenon--the absence of testing of that commitment.The Jedi tend to take one of two attitudes toward the Dark Side of the Force. The first, and IMO stronger, says that young Jedi-in-training should be (safely) exposed to the feelings and significance of the Dark Side, because it averts the "rush" felt by first-time users (it is, after all, likened to a drug). The second  says that all Jedi should be shielded, as much as possible, from any hints of the Dark Side, that ignorance is a defense. For whatever reason, the second attitude almost always predominates among the Jedi, and it almost always leads to a promising young padawan/knight dipping into the Dark Side "for a good reason" at some point--and the sudden RUSH they feel, the power and awareness it provides, proves intoxicating. If that alone isn't enough to tempt future uses (with or without "good reasons"), the whole "keeping it secret" thing and the "continuing to impress my teachers/superiors" thing tends to anyway. Hence why I call it "Jedi weakness"--the Dark Side tends to operate in a sudden extreme rush, so a defense that relies on total ignorance and carefully-reasoned approach is precisely weak to this kind of attack...it works great whenever it isn't tested, which is a <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> defense even if it works for 99% of Jedi.These people almost always start off still believing in good and justice and whatever else, but they've never actually had those beliefs hard tested before. In this case, this is a character who's never had a "character is who you are in the dark" moment before--his Lawfulness (and presumably G or N, given the OP's reaction to being called Evil) has always been supported by others, carried by their strength...he's lived his life on crutches. He's finally walking on his own for the first time, and suddenly realizing what that allows him to do. That's why I keep focusing on the "this is a tipping point" idea: it's an epiphany of some kind, but what specifically it cashes out as, we can't say. If the character doubles down on this--particularly to the extremity of killing witnesses--then the epiphany is "all that legal stuff I used to buy into was total BS." If the guilt builds enough that they stop--particularly to the extremity of attempting to make amends in some form--then the epiphany is "wow, being a cop is actually hard, and I have to work to be good at it."</blockquote>

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