Personality: Sylar is, in so many words, a giant brat. He's self-entitled, self-absorbed, and unable to see past the end of his own nose as far as other people's problems go. He's an unstable, crazy fuck. A lot of it is the result of his upbringing, and to a degree his ability. He can go from being eerily calm to cheerfully mocking his enemies to throwing a full-blown temper tantrum in the course of five minutes. His temper often gets the best of him-- he'll drop whatever scheme he's plotting to throw a giant hissy fit if he feels he's being thwarted or if his plans aren't going exactly how he wants them. This sort of impairs his ability to be a good actor. He can sustain a role, but the second there's a snag, he drops it. No matter what he does, he seems to face things around him with a dry, sarcastic sense of humor-- unless it happens to be one of the days he's angsting and waxing philosophical.
Sylar has a lot of tendencies that clearly spell out textbook psychopath and narcissist. It's easy to pin-point and explain a lot of his traits this way. He manages to charm people who don't know him at all-- Sandra, for example, at a superficial level, because he knows how to play nice, even if he doesn't always exercise the ability. He's a pathological liar, and will say whatever he thinks will get him what he wants.
A huge part of the way he acts is due to how he was treated in his childhood. His biological father sold him to his uncle, and killed his mother in front of him. He was very young-- no exact age is given, but he was probably four or five-- and even though he repressed the memory, there's some deep mental scarring, shown by the way he kills his victims. It's the same way his father killed his mother, and presumably the rest of the people he killed.
If that wasn't enough, the family he was adopted into wasn't exactly better. His father left presumably not long after he was "adopted", leaving him without a male rolemodel for most of his life. This also explains how he tends to cling to most older male figures who come into his adult life-- eg, Chandra Suresh.
When his father abandoned them, he was left to be raised by Virginia Gray. A blanket statement of a word for how Virginia seems to treat him would be "overbearing". She isn't satisfied with his accomplishments, and would rather he be doing something more lucrative than timepiece repair, like accounting. She smothers him, to a degree of emotional abuse. A lot of his eager-to-please personality is a result of Virginia's attitude towards him. One of the driving forces in Sylar's life is a need to be accepted, and that's something he never got from Virginia.
He also happens to have a very skewed sense of self-worth. As in, not only does he think he's the most "special" person to ever walk the planet, he thinks he's entitled to the abilities of other evolved humans. They simply don't deserve their powers, and since he's stronger than most of them, he takes a very drastic survival of the fittest kind of approach and decides they … don't deserve to live, either.
Sylar is, in so many words, a giant brat. He's self-entitled, self-absorbed, and unable to see past the end of his own nose as far as other people's problems go. He's an unstable, crazy fuck. A lot of it is the result of his upbringing, and to a degree his ability. He can go from being eerily calm to cheerfully mocking his enemies to throwing a full-blown temper tantrum in the course of five minutes. His temper often gets the best of him-- he'll drop whatever scheme he's plotting to throw a giant hissy fit if he feels he's being thwarted or if his plans aren't going exactly how he wants them. This sort of impairs his ability to be a good actor. He can sustain a role, but the second there's a snag, he drops it. No matter what he does, he seems to face things around him with a dry, sarcastic sense of humor-- unless it happens to be one of the days he's angsting and waxing philosophical.
Sylar has a lot of tendencies that clearly spell out textbook psychopath and narcissist. It's easy to pin-point and explain a lot of his traits this way. He manages to charm people who don't know him at all-- Sandra, for example, at a superficial level, because he knows how to play nice, even if he doesn't always exercise the ability. He's a pathological liar, and will say whatever he thinks will get him what he wants.
A huge part of the way he acts is due to how he was treated in his childhood. His biological father sold him to his uncle, and killed his mother in front of him. He was very young-- no exact age is given, but he was probably four or five-- and even though he repressed the memory, there's some deep mental scarring, shown by the way he kills his victims. It's the same way his father killed his mother, and presumably the rest of the people he killed.
If that wasn't enough, the family he was adopted into wasn't exactly better. His father left presumably not long after he was "adopted", leaving him without a male rolemodel for most of his life. This also explains how he tends to cling to most older male figures who come into his adult life-- eg, Chandra Suresh.
When his father abandoned them, he was left to be raised by Virginia Gray. A blanket statement of a word for how Virginia seems to treat him would be "overbearing". She isn't satisfied with his accomplishments, and would rather he be doing something more lucrative than timepiece repair, like accounting. She smothers him, to a degree of emotional abuse. A lot of his eager-to-please personality is a result of Virginia's attitude towards him. One of the driving forces in Sylar's life is a need to be accepted, and that's something he never got from Virginia.
He also happens to have a very skewed sense of self-worth. As in, not only does he think he's the most "special" person to ever walk the planet, he thinks he's entitled to the abilities of other evolved humans. They simply don't deserve their powers, and since he's stronger than most of them, he takes a very drastic survival of the fittest kind of approach and decides they … don't deserve to live, either.
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