But I Love the Darkness
Feb. 9th, 2021 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agonyofraYami Marik is the manifestation of Marik Ishtar's extreme hatred, anger, pain, and envy, created to handle the burden of suffering and vengeful desires the other boy could not. Because of this, Yami Marik is a person of pure cruelty, wickedness, and insanity who cares for no one but himself. He is extremely deceitful and treacherous to those around him, and lacks any form of empathy towards others, viewing everyone else as either pawns or prey to either be used until they’ve run their course or to be destroyed for getting in his way. While others in the canon have defined goals, Yami Marik’s goals are nebulous and insane, focusing almost solely on torture, murder, and destruction inflicted on anyone he can. As far as he’s concerned, the end results of his actions are the annihilation of everything on Earth but himself, plunging the world into shadows and suffering, and laughing over the remains in the dark.
A brutal and malicious psychopath, Yami Marik is highly sadistic, to the point that he incorporates this sadism into his dueling strategy. He builds his Deck around torture-themed cards and uses his dark powers to manifest them into reality so he can torture his opponents for his own pleasures. Many of his tortures are long-lasting, repeating their painful effects over the course of many turns, dragging out the torture and providing Marik with even more entertainment. He also shows traits of masochism, exemplified after his "Gil Garth" was destroyed and its pain was transferred to him, resulting in Marik laughed psychotically and stating that he was enjoying the feeling. During his last Duel, he blatantly stated that he got the most twisted pleasure from torturing Yami Yugi, the Pharaoh from millennium ago, whose tomb Marik’s tribe was to eternally guard.
While he shows great interest and knowledge in physical torments, Marik is even more skilled in emotionally torturing his opponents and manipulating them in order to gain an intense advantage. He quicky devises Dark Games that greatly exploit his opponent’s weaknesses and ties them to his games to undermine their abilities.
• For Mai, he created a game where when they lost Life Points, they lost memories, something that Marik didn’t care about, but which had a severe psychological effect on Mai.
• For Jounouchi, he created a game which connected the Duelists to their monsters so that they'd feel the pain their monsters did, then repeatedly tortured Jounouchi to the point of cardiac arrest.
• Finally, for Yami Yugi, Marik created a game where each Duelist’s “other” (the original Marik for Yami Marki and Yugi for Yami Yugi) would be painfully destroyed each time they lost Life Points, something that would ultimately kill both Yami Yugi and Yugi himself, while simultaneously ensuring the original Marik would die and Yami Marik would survive.
His deliberate setups of these games display a very keen mind behind his insanity, as he not only gave himself an advantage over his opponents, but also fed into his opponents’ thoughts and feelings in the future, furthering his ability to play on the emotions of others. However, this indulgence in his sadistic streak and manipulation means Marik has a habit of relying upon his dark powers when he Duels – particularly their role in winning his Duels, since he would have lost against both Mai and Jounouchi had they not succumbed to the distracting and torturous effects of his Dark Games.
Though certainly reliant to a degree on his shadow powers during a Duel, Yami Marik is by no means an incompetent Duelist. He often plans ahead of his opponent and attempts to trap them in inescapable loops to make them fall into despair. Just in in case Yami Yugi survived the attack of "Ra", Marik prepared his Egyptian God Slime to complete his strategy of immortality, then followed up with "Jam Defender" to make the immortal monster the only target Yugi could attack (thanks to its ability to regenerate). He also knew more about the abilities of "Ra" than the original Marik himself and he outwitted his alter ego and Yami Bakura by changing most of the cards in his Deck when forced into an impromptu Duel.
Beyond his sadistic enjoyments, Marik usually displays a very cool and confident demeanor when he’s not facing off against someone he’s directly targeting. However, much of his conversations are soaked in arrogance and confidence and Yami Marik isn’t any shyer about throwing threats under his words as he is blatantly voicing to kill someone. He possesses a very intimidating and vengeful presence, demonstrated clearly during his initial physical emergence from Marik’s psyche. Not only did he immediately stand up to his father’s whippings, disarming the man in the process, he brazenly claimed the Millennium Rod for himself in the presence of its owner, then proceeded to it to pin his father and sister against the wall. His calm approach towards Ishtar was frightening enough, it left the man screaming before Marik ruthlessly murdered his father in revenge. He keeps this same air around him, rarely showing anger or frustrations outside his cocky demeanor. The times he does slip, however, he recovers easily enough and carries on, practically immune to intimidation and fear unless he finds himself in a truly life-threatening situation.
In the Virtual World arc, Yami Marik is also shown to be quite headstrong, as he finally grows bored of waiting around for the others to return and leaves the ship to explore on his own, despite the risk of encountering security forces. When he does, he dispatches them easily enough. He also demonstrates a high degree of recklessness when he destroys a computer that was the only means of stopping a missile launch, his only reason being the destruction that it would cause. Despite the missile threatening to kill him along with everyone else in the digital fortress, he is subsequently seen greatly enjoying the frantic escape on the airship that followed. However, Yami Marik has some difficulty with advanced technology (his Duel Disk notwithstanding), as he had trouble with a security passcode constantly denying him access when he tried to open a door, which led to him ultimately destroying the door to gain access. This is somewhat understandable, as he comes from a part of the world that is not as technologically advanced.
Interestingly, Yami Marik has very little interest in Yami Yugi's or Seto Kaiba's pasts, something which his alter ego wanted to know, and considers the information unimportant to his goals. In addition, while Marik's goal of becoming the new Pharaoh was fueled by a personal enmity towards the Pharaoh particularly, Yami Marik only sees the goal of revenge against the Pharaoh as an added bonus to what he’s already wanting to do. As for his own goals, Marik lacks any truly defined aims, save for for having his own life in the real world and spreading pain and suffering in the world. He even states to Yami Yugi that the pain which was carved into his back would be returned to the world over and over, taking his revenge on the Pharaoh even further by filling the world with darkness and suffering, all for his own personal amusement.
Because of this, Yami Marik considers his original self to be “weak” and “useless” as a person, deriding his other as not “cruel enough” and only causing “a little trouble” while he’s in control. In his own words: "The other Malik is afraid of the dark. But me—me, I love Darkness so very much." With this attitude and ideal, Marik considers himself the "true" Marik, as he acts on the desires and wishes his other is too weak to even acknowledge. He furthers this distinction in that he largely does not consider himself part of the Ishtar family, referring to Ishizu and his father as Marik's rather than his, barring his first emergence where he killed Ishtar. He also explains the pain of Marik's past as if it were his own, though it is arguable if he actually experienced the events himself or if he was birthed after them. Marik actually laughs after recounting it, explaining the story as the trauma that dominates Marik.
That said, despite his cruelty and evil, Yami Marik places his self-preservation as a very high priority and values his own life dearly. He carries a strong hatred for Odion, whose presence was soothing for the original Marik and repressed his dark personality. Once free, Yami Marik made several attempts to murder Odion while he was unconscious, even threatening his sister Ishizu with death if she did not reveal where she had hidden their brother. As Odion’s waking would threaten to seal Yami Marik away again, the man became a direct hindrance to Yami Marik’s existence in the outside world. When facing his own death following his final match with Yami Yugi, Marik became desperate to survive and even sought to reason with the original Marik with a manipulative plea for his life to salvage his existence. Displaying none of his usual confidence, he instead banking on his other’s personal wishes for revenge and suggested they could rule the world together in his final moments. However, given his personality, this was merely Yami Marik trying to convince the original Marik to free him from his predicament.
A brutal and malicious psychopath, Yami Marik is highly sadistic, to the point that he incorporates this sadism into his dueling strategy. He builds his Deck around torture-themed cards and uses his dark powers to manifest them into reality so he can torture his opponents for his own pleasures. Many of his tortures are long-lasting, repeating their painful effects over the course of many turns, dragging out the torture and providing Marik with even more entertainment. He also shows traits of masochism, exemplified after his "Gil Garth" was destroyed and its pain was transferred to him, resulting in Marik laughed psychotically and stating that he was enjoying the feeling. During his last Duel, he blatantly stated that he got the most twisted pleasure from torturing Yami Yugi, the Pharaoh from millennium ago, whose tomb Marik’s tribe was to eternally guard.While he shows great interest and knowledge in physical torments, Marik is even more skilled in emotionally torturing his opponents and manipulating them in order to gain an intense advantage. He quicky devises Dark Games that greatly exploit his opponent’s weaknesses and ties them to his games to undermine their abilities.
• For Mai, he created a game where when they lost Life Points, they lost memories, something that Marik didn’t care about, but which had a severe psychological effect on Mai.
• For Jounouchi, he created a game which connected the Duelists to their monsters so that they'd feel the pain their monsters did, then repeatedly tortured Jounouchi to the point of cardiac arrest.
• Finally, for Yami Yugi, Marik created a game where each Duelist’s “other” (the original Marik for Yami Marki and Yugi for Yami Yugi) would be painfully destroyed each time they lost Life Points, something that would ultimately kill both Yami Yugi and Yugi himself, while simultaneously ensuring the original Marik would die and Yami Marik would survive.
His deliberate setups of these games display a very keen mind behind his insanity, as he not only gave himself an advantage over his opponents, but also fed into his opponents’ thoughts and feelings in the future, furthering his ability to play on the emotions of others. However, this indulgence in his sadistic streak and manipulation means Marik has a habit of relying upon his dark powers when he Duels – particularly their role in winning his Duels, since he would have lost against both Mai and Jounouchi had they not succumbed to the distracting and torturous effects of his Dark Games.
Though certainly reliant to a degree on his shadow powers during a Duel, Yami Marik is by no means an incompetent Duelist. He often plans ahead of his opponent and attempts to trap them in inescapable loops to make them fall into despair. Just in in case Yami Yugi survived the attack of "Ra", Marik prepared his Egyptian God Slime to complete his strategy of immortality, then followed up with "Jam Defender" to make the immortal monster the only target Yugi could attack (thanks to its ability to regenerate). He also knew more about the abilities of "Ra" than the original Marik himself and he outwitted his alter ego and Yami Bakura by changing most of the cards in his Deck when forced into an impromptu Duel.
Beyond his sadistic enjoyments, Marik usually displays a very cool and confident demeanor when he’s not facing off against someone he’s directly targeting. However, much of his conversations are soaked in arrogance and confidence and Yami Marik isn’t any shyer about throwing threats under his words as he is blatantly voicing to kill someone. He possesses a very intimidating and vengeful presence, demonstrated clearly during his initial physical emergence from Marik’s psyche. Not only did he immediately stand up to his father’s whippings, disarming the man in the process, he brazenly claimed the Millennium Rod for himself in the presence of its owner, then proceeded to it to pin his father and sister against the wall. His calm approach towards Ishtar was frightening enough, it left the man screaming before Marik ruthlessly murdered his father in revenge. He keeps this same air around him, rarely showing anger or frustrations outside his cocky demeanor. The times he does slip, however, he recovers easily enough and carries on, practically immune to intimidation and fear unless he finds himself in a truly life-threatening situation.In the Virtual World arc, Yami Marik is also shown to be quite headstrong, as he finally grows bored of waiting around for the others to return and leaves the ship to explore on his own, despite the risk of encountering security forces. When he does, he dispatches them easily enough. He also demonstrates a high degree of recklessness when he destroys a computer that was the only means of stopping a missile launch, his only reason being the destruction that it would cause. Despite the missile threatening to kill him along with everyone else in the digital fortress, he is subsequently seen greatly enjoying the frantic escape on the airship that followed. However, Yami Marik has some difficulty with advanced technology (his Duel Disk notwithstanding), as he had trouble with a security passcode constantly denying him access when he tried to open a door, which led to him ultimately destroying the door to gain access. This is somewhat understandable, as he comes from a part of the world that is not as technologically advanced.
Interestingly, Yami Marik has very little interest in Yami Yugi's or Seto Kaiba's pasts, something which his alter ego wanted to know, and considers the information unimportant to his goals. In addition, while Marik's goal of becoming the new Pharaoh was fueled by a personal enmity towards the Pharaoh particularly, Yami Marik only sees the goal of revenge against the Pharaoh as an added bonus to what he’s already wanting to do. As for his own goals, Marik lacks any truly defined aims, save for for having his own life in the real world and spreading pain and suffering in the world. He even states to Yami Yugi that the pain which was carved into his back would be returned to the world over and over, taking his revenge on the Pharaoh even further by filling the world with darkness and suffering, all for his own personal amusement.
Because of this, Yami Marik considers his original self to be “weak” and “useless” as a person, deriding his other as not “cruel enough” and only causing “a little trouble” while he’s in control. In his own words: "The other Malik is afraid of the dark. But me—me, I love Darkness so very much." With this attitude and ideal, Marik considers himself the "true" Marik, as he acts on the desires and wishes his other is too weak to even acknowledge. He furthers this distinction in that he largely does not consider himself part of the Ishtar family, referring to Ishizu and his father as Marik's rather than his, barring his first emergence where he killed Ishtar. He also explains the pain of Marik's past as if it were his own, though it is arguable if he actually experienced the events himself or if he was birthed after them. Marik actually laughs after recounting it, explaining the story as the trauma that dominates Marik.That said, despite his cruelty and evil, Yami Marik places his self-preservation as a very high priority and values his own life dearly. He carries a strong hatred for Odion, whose presence was soothing for the original Marik and repressed his dark personality. Once free, Yami Marik made several attempts to murder Odion while he was unconscious, even threatening his sister Ishizu with death if she did not reveal where she had hidden their brother. As Odion’s waking would threaten to seal Yami Marik away again, the man became a direct hindrance to Yami Marik’s existence in the outside world. When facing his own death following his final match with Yami Yugi, Marik became desperate to survive and even sought to reason with the original Marik with a manipulative plea for his life to salvage his existence. Displaying none of his usual confidence, he instead banking on his other’s personal wishes for revenge and suggested they could rule the world together in his final moments. However, given his personality, this was merely Yami Marik trying to convince the original Marik to free him from his predicament.
