#darkloids

Let me take the horror aspect of it & just play off that completely. They're still incredibly powerful beings, & I even like the idea of natural-born darkloids (like in the anime) so I'm gonna stick with that. So a Navi must continually rely on dark power to maintain  their strength. It drags them slowly down into madness & corruption, but what if that went just a bit further, by also mutilating their appearance? The more dark power they use, the more fucked up they become. A Navi can avoid this by not going too deep into the rabbithole.

Obvs for natural-born darkloids, they are made from darkness, so they don't really suffer this issue. But using too much dark power still comes at a cost still-- making them temporarily lose control & maybe whatever "normal" appearance they tried to cling to.

I really like the venom aesthetic for it. 

Their jaws unhinging— rows of sharp teeth. Mouths appearing on other parts of their body as well— their torsos opening up into one. Sharp claws, sharp teeth— everything they need to destroy & absorb other Navis & data they’re after.

--a better example being HERE.

The more a navi immerses themselves in dark power, the greater their transformation-- even going so far as to make them unrecognizable to their operator. going from that (often humanoid) appearance--

—to grotesque monsters instead. Using below as an example for Valery’s Navi form (after being immersed in darkness for so long)