IMO the fanon interpretation of the Dark Sides’ dynamic ignores the fascinating canon implications that they’re more like forced family than anything resembling found family. These are three characters who genuinely do not seem to get along— at the very least, Virgil has made it clear that his function as a Side does not mesh well with either Janus or Remus’s functions, and the moment he saw an opportunity to be accepted by the others he ditched them with absolutely no remorse or lingering attachment. Meanwhile the dubiously canon interactions Janus has with Remus come off as him putting up with Remus’s antics simply because what else is he going to do? The most friendly the two of them ever get is when they’re collaborating to screw with c!Thomas— it’s like they’re coworkers who have nothing else in common besides their overlapping goals. The three currently introduced ‘Dark Side’ characters are united only in the fact that they were all outcasts. ‘The Dark Sides’ isn’t even a meaningful phrase, it’s something Roman came up with on the spot to lump together all the Sides that were too complicated and ambiguous to be part of the OG triad. Virgil doesn’t even use the phrase ‘Dark Sides’, he specifically made the point to call Remus and Janus ‘the others’ instead. He knows he used to be part of That group but it wasn’t because he actually identified with them, it’s because everyone else grouped him with them and until AA—maybe even until Fitting In— he thought his only option was to double down on being an antagonist and collaborate with the other ‘antagonist’ Sides no matter how uneasy they made him.
The Dark Sides are those roommates with no prior history who weren’t able to change their contract in time. They’re the students who got put in a group project together and have wildly different ideas on how to approach the material. They’re the only remaining members of a dying club trying desperately to find some reason to keep hanging out together so the club doesn’t die. They’re the kids who all got detention on the same day and figured talking to each other was better than complete solitude. They’re the inhabitants of that one abandoned lunch table in the back of the cafeteria because no other table will take them.
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