"Why aren't they the Jedi ideal?"

"Do you remember when we talked about dangerous ideas?"

"Yeah."

"One of those dangerous ideas, possibly the most dangerous, depending on who you ask, is the philosophy of the Sith. The Sith draw their power from what is called the dark side of the Force, in a sort of dark mirror of the Jedi. They feed on passion, on rage and pain and hate and chaos."

"Rage and pain and hate don't sound like they go together with passion, at all. Passion's a nice feeling. It's fun. Rage and pain and hate feel - really bad."

"By all accounts, the perceptions of the Sith were twisted. Though there has not been a credible recorded encounter with one since the time of the Ruusan Reformation. It is believed they were destroyed."

"I dunno how anyone would think those feel nice."

"It is my hope you need never find out."

"I've felt them before? And they were bad. They weren't sticky, so they weren't bad for long, but sometimes I'd get angry at the slavers for hurting mom. Messing with them 'cause it was funny and got me what I wanted was better, though."

"What made it funny?"

"...Cause they'd get upset or angry or scared or hurt? And that was funny."

"Because it was happening to them instead of you?"

That seems to bring her up short. She mulls over it.

"It feels nice when I make people feel things. And sometimes it's funny if those things are bad."

"Some people find that when others hurt, they hurt in sympathy."

"Huh. I don't think I do that."

"Neither do I, to tell the truth. But it is still important to be aware that many people do."

"So if I hurt someone, it might also hurt other people, too?"

"Potentially, yes."

"Do people also feel hurt if someone they dislike is hurt?"

"they might. It could also be that someone who likes you will feel hurt if they discover you've been hurting other people."

"I know people get scared if they know you're able to hurt people, and they don't trust you won't hurt them, too - is that the thing? Or do they get still hurt even if they know you can't hurt them?"

"Sometimes. Or they conceptualize people who hurt others as evil and they don't want their friend to be evil. Or they're in the same group as you and worry that if outsiders see you hurting people, they'll assume that everyone in the group acts like that."

She frowns. Slowly: "People said I was evil because I was a demon. And they were scared of me, and didn't trust I wouldn't turn on them. But they wanted me to be a demon, because they wanted the slavers messed with and then dead - but they didn't like that I was what they wanted."

"I don't think 'evil' makes much sense."

"People are not perfectly rational. They can want contradictory things at the same time. They can like an outcome while decrying the process that produced it, or enjoy a process but disavow the outcome."

She nods, slowly.

She's... Not actually sure what she thinks of all that.

Pause, then: "If someone stops liking me 'cause they find out something about me, I'm not sure they actually liked me in the first place."