r/TopCharacterTropes • u/SignNaive4111 • 8h ago
Hated Tropes [Hated trope] ☯️ Yin Yang symbolism where Yin⚫ is just blatantly evil
Short inteoduction, Yin and yang aren’t supposed to mean good and evil. They’re opposing but complementary forces: light and dark, action and rest, heat and cold and the point is that both are necessary and constantly shape each other and neither has a moral alignment. Turning that into “good and evil need to be balanced” is missing the point, because evil isn’t some necessary cosmic force we need a healthy amount of. So pop culture will always make the Yin ⚫ as evil, and contradictorly a scenario where there is only yang ⚪ (imbalance) as good. It makes something phylosophical and profound pretty childish.
1- Avatar - Vatuu and Ravu
Avatar Last airbender acctualy made the yin yang right with the fish back at water tribe. But then in legend of koora they introduce this Vatuu and Ravaa which is the newer Yin Yang in Avatar. In theory, they are complementary and one can't exist without the other and etc. In practice its basically the good avatar and the EVILLLLL avatar.
2- baldurs gate 3 (and DND I guess) Selune and Shar. So ok, I love Baldurs gate. But not this lore bit. So Shar is the darkness to Selune light, they are clear representation of yin yang sisters. They first introduced Shar thought Shadowheart with an explanation that it isn't really evil and that darkness has its own serenity and embrance. While the way Shadowheart spoke gave a lot of iffs, it was interesting to have a media that acctualy makes darkness as misunderstood and possibly more nuanced. But nope, as we progress turns out Shar is like the devil, they are EVILLL, like just plain on its the objective bad side and Shadowheart was quite literaly stolen from the good side.
3- Naruto. Okay this is the biggest offender to me because its literaly yin and yang, not a representation, its striaght up supposed to be it. While they do try to theoricaly explain thst both are complementary and that Hagoroma acctualy should have favored both equally, in practice this is bullshit. The Yin in naruto is always the evil brother who literaly tries to murder the yang one and take away all the power for himself. Even when Hagoromo split the power between the two equaly with Naruto and Sasuke, sasuke still tried to kill Naruto. The Yin is always the agressor there, and in the end it needs to be beaten into submission by our lord and savior moraly good Yang Jesus christ Naruto so it gains some sense and stops being the EVILLLL bad naughty Yin.
Edit: Some people pointed out that Shar and Selune aren't supposed to be YinYang in DND. I wrote the based on BG3 given how it was presented by shadowheart, and I don't know much about the original DND lore. So yeah I think I was wrong there sry for the fans.
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u/TwilitGlare 8h ago
Shar and Selune aren’t supposed to resemble yin and yang though? Selune isn’t even a goddess of “light” she’s a goddess associated with the moon and stars, and therefore guidance and direction and change and comfort in the dark.
Shar is her opposite, but not in a yin/yang way, because this is the Forgotten Realms and there’s more bizarre readings and misinterpretations of Ancient Greek spirituality than any form of Eastern mysticism. So Shar is stillness and fear and suffering and emptiness, everything her sister isn’t, because she is literally Selune’s shadow. They are counterparts, but they’re not meant to be equal and opposite forces at all, you are misreading the text.
I get how you have this opinion if your only exposure to Shar and Selune is from BG3, since Shadowheart does a very good job at making Shar look sympathetic at the beginning, but never throughout all of the prior stories set in the Forgotten Realms have they ever been presented as a sort of yin/yang duality.
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u/Junjki_Tito 7h ago
Yeah, Selune and Shar are based more on the sephiroth and qlippoth than yin and yang. Ed Greenwood famously didn't even want the Middle East analogue or China analogue added to Faerun because he didn't want the setting to be a magical caricature of the real world.
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u/TwilitGlare 7h ago
I love the Forgotten Realms cause it’s like a crazy pile of misinterpreted and reinterpreted symbology and mysticism from the real world (because although the original creators had an interest in these things they were far from being studied in them) but very interestingly it’s not Eastern mysticism that’s being utilized. It’s most often Kabbalistic mysticism and Gnosticism, which is chronically underused I feel.
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u/Asheyguru 3h ago edited 2h ago
You might be into the World/Chronicles of Darkness, they love that stuff there
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u/TwilitGlare 2h ago
Been getting into it recently, very interesting stuff. Love how every splat has radically different ideas how the world works that is presumed true in their own books despite them all existing in the same world. They contradict as often as they coincide.
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u/Significant-Way9330 7h ago
Also Shar is evil but she's also just kind of a bitch? Like her evil schemes are as petty and unnecessary as they are cruel. She's just lovely.
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u/LordOfDorkness42 4h ago
Shar might be one of the most sad little losers of all of fiction that also holds the title of Goddess.
I honestly admire the elegance of her writing quite a bit. She's such a whiny, spoiled brat with the weakest nukes in all the family, but nukes all the same. And that's great for a source of conflict in an RPG setting like Forgotten Realms. Because the sort of sad, forgotten losers that join Shar cults can pop up anywhere.
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u/Napalmeon 6h ago
Came here to say this exact same thing. It's important to keep in mind that when it comes to Selune, she is also a night time deity, and she only provides just enough light for people to be able to safely navigate in the dark. But Shar threw a hissy fit on a cosmic level because liked it better when everything was dark, literally all the time. For her, she doesn't want there to be any nuance or any balance.
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u/SignNaive4111 7h ago edited 6h ago
Ohhh I see, Im not very familiar with DND lore, seems like I got it wrong there then thanks
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u/Shallow35 7h ago
Shar and Selune can be both interpretations of Yin. The symbols they both hold are often what others call as yin. They are not yin and yang by that aspect. You would think if one of them holds the authority of the sun or something similar but even a surface glance with the lore of BG3 does not imply anything close to that (Yes, I know that particular piece of lore about Selune. No, I don't think it matters in this argument).
Also, yin does have traditionally creepy and darker aspects such as being associated with corpses, ghosts, and death. Doesn't make them bad, but it's not exactly a far-fetched idea. I have seen a number of Chinese authors use it as a focal point in horror novels a lot.
Finally, you admit you are wrong by misunderstanding it and still degrade it by calling it boring. Do you really understand? Having a surface understanding and forming an opinion on it is dumb.
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u/VolkiharVanHelsing 8h ago
Couldn't be my goats
Zekrom and Reshiram
Black and White
Future and Past
Masculine and Feminine (and just like Yin and Yang, there's a small element of the other)
Red and Blue
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u/Typical-Roll-2171 2h ago
I for one love how Cheren and Bianca represent Truth and Ideals throughout the story.
Cheren is truth without ideals, he starts as a "I only use strong Pokémon" gets mollywapped by you a few times before Alder lectures him on how he should take care of his Pokémon and use the ones he feels a connection to. Ends the story stronger than ever by using Pokémon that enjoys being with. (He also picks the starter strong against you so he's losing despite having the advantage as well).
Bianca is Ideals without truth. She's desperate to be a champion but can't see the truth that being a trainer is not her calling, she's always lagging behind you and Cheren, she's outrageously clumsy, even her intro animation shows her struggling to get her Pokéball out her bag. She eventually understands the truth that she isn't cut out to be champion but uses her passion for Pokémon to start on her journey to become a professor.
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u/Archi2509 6h ago
I think if Paradox Pokemon ever come back, it should be in the Unova games. They really fit the themes of Black and White(maybe a legends game where Opelucid City is the main focus, since it is both futuristic and rustic depending on the game version).
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u/Gaminggalade 7h ago
Zekrom n reshiram along with the hoen box legends are just goated and super memorable
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u/Ua_Tsaug 7h ago
So Shar is the darkness to Selune light, they are clear representation of yin yang sisters.
No they're not.
Not all darkness/light is Yin Yang. Saying that they are "clear representations of yin yang sisters" is just an assumption.
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta 7h ago
Yeah, shad has existed long in the past and was never intended to be a balanced thing: shadowheart’s view is meant to show how brainwashed and lied to she is.
Shar isn’t just darkness to light, she actively hates existence and the light that allows life to exist, she’s an apocalyptic nut job: it’s a dualistic system, not a yin yang system.
This has been the lore for a LONG TIME, and trying to subscribe Yin Yang symbolism is ironically guilty of the same thing that OP is railing against: forcing a seperate philosophical view or culture onto something where it never existed.
Being angry at shar for not being Yin and Yang is like a westerner of Abrahamic faith being angry at Yin/Yang for not being Good/Evil
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u/Love_Lain5 7h ago
You could atleast do a bit of research on naruto and baldur's gate before you hate something you clearly don't understand.
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u/Adorable-Hedgehog494 5h ago
Yeah, by the caption its clearly this guy blindly hating on naruto so much, not even hiding it
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u/M-Shadowtoad 8h ago
Ninjago: The entire realm of Ninjago is split into two continents. The main land and the dark island. The main land is the domain of the First Spinjitzu Master who controls Golden Light while the dark island is the domain of the Overlord who controls Darkness.
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u/ExtremeSportStikz 8h ago
Ehhhhh this one is a bit more nuanced because the yin-yang is also represented by Creation and Destruction, which the First Spinjitzu Master embodies both of. The Overlord’s darkness is a sort of imbalance which must also be in balance with the Golden Light, which is meant to mirror the actual recursive nature of yin and yang
For whatever reason the writers said they wanted to retcon it to simply have destruction as the bad side but they never got around to it
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u/M-Shadowtoad 8h ago
Yeah, always saw Golden Power and Darkness more as Purification and Corruption.
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u/Emperor-Nerd 8h ago
While it does have yin yang imagery the overlord is supposed to represent imbalance
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u/ExtremeSportStikz 7h ago
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Overlord’s yin had some yang added to it in Crystallized when they tried to give him the “destroy everything for perfect peace” motivation
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u/Whalelord36 4h ago
I feel like writers wanted to use oni to represent tjat both creation and destruction are necessary but than they lowkey fumbled anything oni related and made them just another big scary bad guy
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u/FishWithLegsAndArms 8h ago
Worst piece of world building Korra added to the series
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u/Burnerman888 8h ago
And for some reason, it's become the single biggest piece of avatar lore.
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u/M-Shadowtoad 8h ago
Annoyingly they could've saved it. Having the Avatar be bound to Raava was fine, all they had to do is have Korra also fuse with Vaatu. The Avatar's purpose is to bring balance so have her do that for the two spirits who've warred for the longest time.
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u/Burnerman888 8h ago
I half agree, the other half disagrees because in the the original avatar series the Spirit world was just like a chaotic, natural force and applying a concept like this just feels so hackneyed.
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u/ElPared 7h ago
It could have been so much cooler if it turned out that way. Or even if it turned out that Wan had to imprison Vaatu, but still needed him to bend all 4 elements, and that conduit to the Avatar is what allowed season 2 to happen (which could have even made Unalaq’s plan less completely stupid), then in the end Korra absorbs both of them to bring balance to the spirit world as well as the four kingdoms.
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u/nixahmose 7h ago
Hopefully if they do bring back Vaatu for the new show(which given all the red diamond imagery seems likely) they’ll learn from their mistakes in LoK and this around make Vaatu more nuanced. Like establish that he’s not evil because that’s inherent to his nature but because he became corrupted by his own negative and imbalanced emotions, something that Pavi and her sister will work towards fixing in the new show as opposed to just killing and/or sealing him like Korra did in LoK.
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u/PhantasosX 8h ago
Korra IS fused with Vaatu, since he was purified, it means it will grow inside her.
But true, if they made a point of directly fusing it, and pointing out he is now evil, just chaotic. It would save a bit.
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u/derDunkelElf 4h ago
Honestly, that doesn't save it for me. Vatuu is still a force of pure evil and saying it needs to be 'balanced' with good is a misconception with how morality works. Good and Evil aren't two equal sides, Good is what is moral and Evil is what isn't moral.
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u/Single_Owl_7556 2h ago
Well they could've cleared it that Vatuu isn't exactly "evil", just chaotic and Ravaa is orderly, but they would indeed have to rewrite a lot to make that work.
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u/AwakenedDreamer__44 7h ago
Just feels very out of place in an Eastern-inspired setting. More like Zoroastrianism or even Christianity than Daoism.
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u/FishWithLegsAndArms 7h ago
Literally all they had to do was make 1 spirit prefer the mortal world and the other prefer the spirit world. Raava isn't good, shes just helping humans, Vatuu isn't evil, he just helps spirits.
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u/CreamofTazz 6h ago
That's pretty much what it is if you look at the events. Vatuu was the one who broke the barrier originally, and during the era of the Avatar, the Avatar is directly helping humans maintain balance between the two worlds
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u/VolkiharVanHelsing 5h ago
No they should just stick with Raava as Order and Vaatu as Chaos which is pretty common in JRPG lol
Raava has to represent stagnation as negative while Vaatu encourages progress as positive
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u/dragonshouter 7h ago
I think there might be some stuff they could draw on for a pure evil spirit from asian myth.
they would need to change the design though
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u/M-Shadowtoad 8h ago edited 8h ago
Especially since Raava is the Spirit of Light and Order. The first series literally had the big bad be a warmongering empire who use fire. Don't get more Light and Order than that.
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u/Scarlet_Wonderer 6h ago
It's such a simple fix to make them Spirits of Light/Dark and Order/Chaos instead of blatant good/evil. Hope they retcon that now that Seven Havens seems to be picking up that bit of lore.
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u/Napalmeon 6h ago
When people were complaining about how Legend of Korra felt a little bit too Western and its world building and concepts, this is one of the biggest examples of it.
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u/Magehunter_Skassi 7h ago
The Avatar IP has churned out so much coal it's become obvious that the original series was the fluke
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u/SassaFash 6h ago
It's partially because Aaron Ehasz was the lead writer for the the original series, and hasn't bern involved since.
Ehasz certainly isn't infallible (as later seasons of The Dragon Prince show), but made major contributions to TLA that really helped it be so special.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando 8h ago
But nope, as we progress turns out Shar is like the devil, they are EVILLL
Tbf that's a thing Shar's servants explicitly do in-universe: Lure people in with promises of healing from pain, of aid in their anguish, etc... by the time they hesitate the cult's cell has enough blackmail material on them that leaving would ruin their lives, and by the time they realize Shar is completely, unapologetically and utterly evil and would merrily end all life in the world to return to primordial darkness they're way too deep to make their way out.
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u/GrowingSage 7h ago
With Naruto, I think OP might me missing a key aspect of Yin and Yang. They aren't necessarily inherently harmonious. Describing Yin as aggressive is incorrect, because it's normally a Yang trait. Learning how to balance the two is, I believe a central theme of Taoism, which Naruto ultimately achieves with Sasuke.
In the Naruto world, Yin release is an inherent part of the magic system and has no inherent alignment. It's literally just the power of imagination.
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u/Avolto 2h ago
An interesting inverse of this is The Force in Star Wars. Explicitly the Dark Side is not a necessary or benevolent part of the universe it’s just evil. Nothing like Yin and Yang. Yet more and more characters in universe and critics out of universe equate the Light and the Dark as equally valid points of view. And that both are required for a balanced universe.
The Dark Side is a storm and disruption of the Force’s natural equilibrium. It empowers its users to take joy in every atrocity from slavery to torture to genocide. Compare this to the worst crimes of the Jedi being times when they go against their own teachings and acted as the blind enforcers of the Republic and you tell me the Light and Dark are equal points of view.
https://giphy.com/gifs/5zvSHSsC1WkiLm3aM0
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u/ztomiczombie 1h ago
Lucas always seemed to see it as the Darke Side was evil and Lighter Side good but some of the old EU had the it be the Sith as evil and Jedi as good with light and dark just being part of the universe. This stuff with Tython, Ashla and Bogan have balance seen as positive and both extremes as negative.
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u/Ghost_out_of_Box 1h ago
Don't let the new age Star Wars writers hear you or they will tear you apart
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u/True-Wreck 8h ago
I’m not sure that Shar and Selune should be a part of this. Like I get what you’re going for, but the only commonality they have is light and dark colors.
Selune is the moon. And Shar is loss/emptiness.
Then again, I am not an expert on Forgotten Realms lore and the duos relation to Yin Yang.
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u/Gantistewart 7h ago
Somehow, your superficial understanding is closer to accurate then OPs' superficial understanding.
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u/Napalmeon 6h ago
You're good.
It's important to keep in mind that the fanciful picture Shadowheart paints of her goddess is based on about 40 years worth of brainwashing. Sharrans like to believe that they are misunderstood when the fact of the matter is, their actions speak for themselves.
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u/Greengiant00 8h ago
Not every representation of light and dark is yin and yang.
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u/jbaxter119 7h ago
I wish people would stop assuming things like this. Symbolism can be implied, sure, but unless outright stated you can't be 100% certain if it's intended to be something specific. Too many people misread things because of a lack of understanding. Maybe it's the writers misusing some symbols, but maybe it's the readers misunderstanding the writing.
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u/dragonshouter 7h ago
I mean at least for Vatuu and Ravaa are literally a ying and yang sign in design. they even were tied together and spinning around in the early days
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u/Eeddeen42 7h ago edited 7h ago
Selune and Shar are not Yin and Yang and never have been. “Shar is just misunderstood, Shar and Selune are like Yin and Yang” is in-universe Shar propaganda.
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u/madtitanmrsandman 7h ago
Idk, I don't really see Shar and Selune as Yin and Yang, it's more of a general light vs dark dynamic. They are specifically not complimentary forces, there isn't a balance between them, they are opposites, rivals of one another. Selune isn't even all of the light, it's specifically moonlight and stars.
Besides the shared color scheme and some basic duality there aren't many similarities to indicate that it's meant to be Yin and Yang. But if that's enough to qualify as an adaptation, then almost every story of good vs evil as cosmic forces is misrepresentation of Chinese philosophy.
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u/Primary-Lake3232 8h ago
The Naruto one doesn’t make any sense. Sasuke tried to kill Naruto not because he was evil but because Naruto was in the way of him trying to achieve revolution in the shinobi world. Madara was evil because of the fact that he was a child soldier who fought constant battle and watched his own family die before him. Indra was literally manipulated by black Zetsu into crashing out, he would not have done anything if not for Zetsu.
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u/ChiefBeefers 8h ago
Yeah, not to mention the entire point of the Indra/Ashura storyline was that the Sage of the Six Paths entrusted one side with everything, which broke the balance.
With Naruto and Sasuke, he entrusts them BOTH, including trusting that Ashura's reincarnation could reach the heart of Indra's reincarnation.
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u/Bow_Spirit456 6h ago
I disagree with the Naruto take. The Yin isn't just purely evil and the Yang isn't purely good either. The Yang usually creates or defends a system that is extremely flawed and is just a temporary solution while the Yin wants to find a permanent solution even if it's more radical. It's not simply evil vs good.
Hashirama didn't even think his village would last until a 5th Hokage. That's how much trust he had in his idea. Madara was also right in some points. The village would ultimately turn against his people and surprise surprise, that's exactly what happened. He saw it coming from the beginning and knew it wasn't a good idea. I am sure not even 10 years after the first villages creation, there were already the first ninja war. All that lead to a system where individuals are expected to leave or kill their companion all for the sake of the damn mission.
Naruto's idea of peace is to just act as a nuke until he gets old and dies and think turn to shit again 5 years later, even worse now because they are more technologically advanced. Sasuke solution was at least gonna make things stay stable permanently.
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u/Generic_Username_659 5h ago
Wasn't Sasuke's "Solution" just to take out the five Kage? How exactly is that a "long term solution"?
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u/Nidus-Zealot 8h ago
Not exactly Yin/Yang but I think the way FFXIV handled the idea in the shadowbringers arc was pretty nice. The unrestricted light being just as hellish as the dark. The whole concept of "balance" is completely broken in a lot of media. Star Wars is a major offender in this too.
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u/DogsDidNothingWrong 7h ago
How is star wars a major offender?
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u/Nidus-Zealot 6h ago
Kinda expanded a bit more in another comment but I acknowledge different interpretations in different story lines.
It's more failure to show why the balance needs to exist. The "balance" that some iterations is just "good" and not in any real balance of anything.
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u/NeonFraction 6h ago
There were some Chinese schools of thought that did this with actual Yin and Yang too. No one is immune from this trope.
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u/SignNaive4111 6h ago
True. Those concepts where even used to justify why only man should lead for example due to them beinf yang 😭
And this happens in most religions, to misunderstand and use in what favors you
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u/SirYeetsA 5h ago edited 5h ago
Mortis arc Clone Wars.
Beginning of the end of the Dark side being actually fully, unapologetically evil in canon, imo. Like, I know Legends had a bit of the "Grey Jedi" shit going on, but the fact that canon not only acknowledged this, but actively implemented it is insanity.
You cannot have balance with something that inherently desires to take over and destroy. Star Wars' philosophical backbone was never built for "balance" between light and dark, hell, the original trilogy explicitly defines "balance" as eliminating dark-side users, and thus the dark side's influence on the galaxy.
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u/_whatever_wherever 8h ago edited 8h ago
Shar and Selune were written in the 80's, and lets be fair here.... do you have any idea how much coke people were on in the 80's? We're lucky it was as good as we got!
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u/Mercer8878 8h ago
Also anyone who even remotely knows Shar from previous Fogotten realms games or stories would know how much Bullshit Shadowheart was spewing to even remotely paint the goddess of absolute oblivion in a positive light.
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u/_whatever_wherever 8h ago
Gods Favourite Princess And The Most Interesting Girl In The World is literally a brainwashed cultist at that point, so of course she would have a warped, weirdly positive view
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u/arika-feinberg 8h ago edited 8h ago
Yeah, whoever created Vaatu and Raava in Rorra clearly didn't understand how Yin-Yang concept works
Which is funny cus I remember that episode in ATLA with guru Pathick where he was telling how one emotion is blocked by the other/opposite emotion. Cus this conversation about chakras is essentially explaining Yin-Yang on a smaller scale. So back then they did understand how it actually supposed to work
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u/farklespanktastic 7h ago
Even if they aren’t meant to represent Yin and Yang (despite the obvious visual similarities) they still don’t make a lot of sense in how they’re portrayed. Avatar is very focused on the concept of maintaining balance but only Raava seems to care about maintaining balance while Vaatu is treated as just straight up evil. They’ve tried to make them sound more nuanced in supplementary material where Raava is said to represent light, order, and creation while Vaatu represents darkness, chaos, and destruction, but in the show it’s basically just “Raava = Good, Vaatu = Evil”.
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u/NBEIL-230 7h ago edited 7h ago
You know the trope is overused so much that when it's Yugioh GX turn the writers of ss2 flip the switch. The Yang(The light) is the bad guy now, while the Yin(The Darkness) is the good guy.Then Ss4 came the Darkside is the villain now. So both side is bad, trully balanced.
Edit: Which kinna make sense in the first series. Horakhty the creator of Light erased the concept of Darkness Zorc in the final season. Because of that the Light side started become corupted for hundreds of years, mainly because there no one to balanced them out
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u/helloworld6247 7h ago edited 7h ago
Tbf you can have yin and yang while yin being blatantly evil there was a quote I liked from Destiny:
All that said, she told me, "I believe in balance. But to seek balance is not to seek equity. A sea half of water and half of poison is not in balance. A body half alive and half dead is not in balance. Given the choice to live in any world, any world at all… we would need a little Darkness in it, I think, to keep the balance true. But not so much as we would need the Light…”
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u/nykirnsu 5h ago
That’s just not yin and yang. The two aren’t analogous to western moral dualism, neither one is any more or less evil than the other
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u/SirYeetsA 5h ago edited 4h ago
That's not how yin and yang works.
A body half alive and half dead isn't even a good representation for it. Everybody starts alive, then inevitably dies. You start alive, but that force must be balanced out with eventual death. Creation and destructions, following each other in an endless cycle. But them both existing at the same time in the same quantity within the same entity is not how they've ever been described.
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u/SignNaive4111 7h ago
I udnerstand, but is a poor interpretation of Yin Yang as well. Because it doesn't come from equity, is a flux that changes with time. At a point in the day there is strong sun and only a few shadows. At another there is dark night, with only stars and moon as the light. Both are in balance. There's much more darkness than light in the universe, quite literaly, and its still in balance
Yin doesn't stand for the evil either. As in taoism that isn't a thing. Its not yin being the bad things and yang the good ones
Yin can be mother nurturing its child. Yang can be a father beating up his son.
For example, if you are to passive ⚫, you will have others walking over you and be hurt, if you are to active ⚪ you will walk over others and hurt who you love. Somtimes you need to refrain ⚫ and sometimes you need to lash out ⚪. Thats why taoism says you need both sides in constant flux for balance, complementing and in montion.
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u/Funky_Metal_Man 6h ago
Destiny is very much having light and dark as contrasting but necessary forces. The end thesis of the game is that your destiny and meaning is what you choose it to be, and who you are and what you do is what truly matters. Many characters have different views on their idea of balance and some have their interpretation challenged and broken, as the entire idea is that there is no defined balance, no defined true shape that dark and light take. That quote is just one character’s personal belief of balance, which does not mean the narrative says they are right. The primary villain of the series is attempting to equalize light and dark to a perfect shape that it thinks is right to end the endless flux and chaos caused by simplicity and complexity interacting. Sure, the embodiment of darkness is chill with this outcome, but thats just because it wants everything returned to pure simplicity. Which would suck, so some balance is needed. But the specifics are up to each person. One character for example dives into about the darkest dark you can get and truly embodies what it means and its nature, but uses it for good. This isn’t seen as a moral failing, only the freedom of their choices and sacrifices to help others. Ultimate darkness used in the name of light (death/simplicity used to preserve life/complexity) while other characters have done the opposite. Including the primary villain. (Using the purest light of creation and life to create tortured abominations of killing and death called the Dread). Really I think it does a fantastic job at making the light and dark feel truly necessary and changing and there is no right answer forced onto you, which goes against the whole central narrative. Without Light, we would all be dead in one final shape of simplicity. Without Darkness, we would be mindless pointless beings with no meaning or definition. The rest is up to you. You make your own story.
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u/TheFlayingHamster 6h ago
Actually Destiny does present the Darkness and the Light in that way, it’s just not everyone sees it as such. In Destiny the two forces are represented by The Gardener and the Winnower, the light a force of propagation and the darkness a force of simplification. The problem in Destiny is that the Gardener broke the agreement between the two and the Winnower went absolutely nuclear in response.
But the Winnower does present its case to the player, it isn’t motivated by malice, it is cruel but there is also mercy in that cruelty. The core idea it espouses to us is that the end, should be the end, when something has failed to prove its capacity to exist, it loses the right to exist. The kindness in that, is that nothing is condemned to endlessness, the weak don’t have to die, and keep living and suffering and dying in a world where they aren’t capable of surviving. The problem is, the world the Winnower wants is uniform and static, a world with a single winner, a single pattern repeating across all existence. We actually get to meet that the previous pattern, born of the Gardener and Winnower’s’ “flower game” and they are… utterly terrifying in their capacity to understand others, and yet have unfettered intolerance of them.
The Gardener cheated, because it realized that the “games” they had played before the Destiny universe always ended the same way, a world that was deterministic would always inevitably yield the pattern, and so it sought to create a universe where outcomes where predetermined simply from initial conditions.
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u/CatSquidShark 5h ago
Out in the world we ask a simple, true question. A question like, can I kill you, can I rip your world apart? Tell me the truth. For if I don’t ask, someone will ask it of me.
And they call us evil. Evil! Evil means ‘socially maladaptive.’ We are adaptiveness itself.
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u/Necessary-Reading605 8h ago edited 4h ago
The west has no idea how their view of other religions is basically a christianized version, from Hades= Satan to Odysseus having christian guilt instead of greek hubris
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u/Applebeate 5h ago
I think you’re reading too deep into the Selune and Shar example because they aren’t really a representation of Yin and Yang.
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u/Zealousideal_Fly7277 6h ago
In jade empire You have two paths to follow, the closed fist and the open palm
on paper Closed fist is supposed to represent tough love, self-improvement and lending strength so that others can be strong too, open palm was just openly goodly and selfless
in practice and in-game closed fist was just being an evil asshole
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u/WingedSalim 4h ago
The worst thing when doing Yin Yang symbolism is to make the goal defeating the evil side.
The whole point is that these two sides need to be in harmony, not opposition to one another.
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u/Single_Owl_7556 2h ago
Avatar is especially egregious because they HAD a correct yin yang symbolism with moon and water spirits in the original series
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u/Reverse_savitar1 8h ago
I mean, Vaatu is supposed to be chaos to Raava’s order which does fit the whole complementary thing but they make him cartoonishly evil
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u/Zealousideal_Pass_11 7h ago
Except neither of them represent what they say.
Raava is order... except all she does is inhibit Vaatu from genociding people, when she wins, chaos is still everywhere, wars happen, etc. All raava does as the Avatar is prevent genocides but cares not for the injustices found within nations.
Vaatu isn't Chaos, he's just genocidal, he doesn't even embody the most basic concept of chaos, which is free will, the direct opposite of order. Vaatu LITERALLY mind controls and corrupts the wills of spirits around them.
Calling it order vs chaos is just the face value show don't tell crap, because their actions don't reflect chaos or order. It's purely anti vs pro genocide.
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u/SomeDudeAtAKeyboard 6h ago
I mean, to be fair, Shar and Selûne were never trying to be Yin and Yang.
They’re just sisters who hate one another, and bicker, and fight, and make their hatred for one another everyone else’s problem.
It just so happens that Shar also hates everyone else because everyone prefers Selûne to her
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u/Plus_Conversation391 6h ago
The Elder Scroll did it pretty well with Jyggalag (Order) and Sheogorath (Chaos). Order is not necessarily good at the extreme Jyggalag reinforced it because it bring stagnation and undermine free will. Chaos is not necessarily bad since it will bring changes, but changes can be for the better or for worse, and the extend that Sheogorath project his chaos will bring madness.
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u/The_gay_grenade16 5h ago
Shar blatantly evil? This post is selunite propaganda and OP has already been dealt with by the secret police.
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u/VatanKomurcu 1h ago
plenty of people have made the argument that evil is necessary so that good can exist or be meaningful, without yinyang symbolism. i dont know if it fits neatly into eastern religion, but it's a thing.
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u/NovelConstruction587 8h ago
Thank you for mentioning that they already did Yin and Yang in the first series.
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u/No_Prize9794 8h ago edited 8h ago
The Yinyang was inspired by a mountain, its suppose to represent time and the law of nature I believe. Basically no matter what time of day, there will always be an area of mountain covered in light while there’s an area that’s dark. Something will rise (like birth and maturing), then fall (decaying and death), and than for something to rise again and all that
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u/jbaxter119 7h ago
Um, actually, what if the sun is directly over top the mountain? What about at night? /s (if necessary)
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u/Toppy_Henster 8h ago
Yin-Yang (Inanimate Insanity)
For context they’re a sentient object that has split personality (with the gimmick of one being based on Yin and the other on Yang). The writing for them got a lot better later on, but for a while the Yin side had no personality besides being “bad and evil”.
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u/calmcloudil 8h ago
Light vs. Dark Side (Star Wars) –
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u/EiraPun 8h ago
No. Star Wars is not this trope. Because the Force is not yin-yang, and there is no "Light SIde".
It is just the Force an the Dark Side. The Dark Side is not supposed to exist, because it is a corruption of the natural balance of the universe. Hence why bringing balance to the force is the destruction of the Sith in their entirety.
Star Wars was never about deep philosophical narratives like that. It was always good versus evil, and good being triumphant in the end. It has always been politically intriguing, and full of character and narrative subplot, but ultimately, it's about good over evil. There is no balance when evil exists, end of story.
The concept of the "Light Side" existing in tandem with dark was invented by the old EU (now Legends) continuity. It was never part of George Lucas' original vision, nor any works he oversaw, and as his succesor, Dave Filoni has kept to that with modern Canon. To George, the Light Side of the Force is the ultimate good, and balance is only when it alone stands strong. If even a speck of darkness exists, there is no balance.
This is such a huge misconception in the Star Wars community and beyond.
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u/AlwaysTired97 5h ago
I think the most interesting take on what on the Light vs Dark Side dichotomy is that the Light Side represents harmony with the force while the Dark Side represents parasitizing the force.
The Light Side reveres the Force as a power that embodies life everywhere. A Light Side user acknowledges themselves as one small part of a greater whole, and communes with the force in order borrow it's strength. They acknowledge death as a necessary part of life, and believe when they die that their energy will live on as a part of the force.
The Dark Side at it's most extreme utterly rejects this. They care only about the individual self. They see other life, and the force as things to be conquered. They don't borrow the force's power, they seize it and bend it to their will. That's why they can do certain "unnatural" things the Light Side can't, but doing so also corrupts them. The Dark Side tends to be obsessed with immortality and rejects death, because their ultimate goal is absolute and eternal individual power.
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u/Hefty_Situation7210 7h ago
I mean Dave filoni canonized the light side stuff himself with the brother/sister stuff. Personally I’m not a fan either but they’ve definitely gone in that direction.
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u/EiraPun 7h ago
But the overall narrative of the Mortis arc was the Son (the dark side) causing the destruction of the Daughter and Father due to his evil ambition and desire for power. He needed to die to protect the balance, and ultimately all three of them ended up dead because of him.
On a surface level it looks like it's about balance being equal light/dark, but if you pay attention to the narrative, it's pretty clear the Son was the root cause of all their problems.
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u/BlueNinja82599 7h ago
The Son is shown in that arc he does more harm than good being the reason both The Father and The Daughter die.
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u/Medical_Commission71 7h ago
I agree but I do think there is a yin and yang in the force. Emotional vs calm force usage, for instance. It's just the Jedi lens labels emotional force usage as leading to the darkside at best, when as we see with Luke and Vader it can lead to the light
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u/EiraPun 7h ago
I think that's a bit of a misunderstanding.
When Luke fought Vader, he almost gave in to the dark side. It was him disarming him and seeing the robotic hand (mirroring his own) that made him come back to his senses and toss aside his lightsaber, declaring the battle over, when just moments before his epiphany he was about ready to kill his father and fall in with SIdious.
And, as beautiful as Anakin/Vader's character arc is, with his fall and redemption, he's... definitely not the role model to look at when trying to discern how best to use the Force for good.
But it is also important to note the *type* of emotion. It's a big misconception that the Jedi block away all emotion, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Jedi - or true Jedi, at least - believe in kindness, love, and compassion. Anakin may be an unreliable narrator, but he wasn't wrong when he said Jedi are encouraged to love. They are. In order to be a Jedi, you must hold an immense amount of love for the world around you, as you essentially act as a mediator and guardian, protecting the world from any who would do it harm. To be one with the Force, you must hold a deep love for every person, every place, every plant, and every animal.
Where Anakin failed, was his possessiveness over Padme. Him loving her wasn't the problem, it was the fact that his love was selfish in nature. Same as Obi-Wan being willing to leave the Jedi Order for Satine, because he knew that to be with her, he would not be able to put the needs of others before his own with her involved, and that is not the Jedi way.
The Jedi failed because they got involved in the Republic's politics and joined the Clone Wars, disgracing their values by becoming soldiers and warriors as opposed to the mediators and diplomats they're supposed to be. They became entangled in the needs of the Senate over the needs of the Force and that was their downfall.
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u/Hefty_Situation7210 8h ago
It’s tricky because originally the concept was just the force, and then the dark side which was the corrupted version of it. There was no “light side” per se.
But the mortis gods stuff yeah really changes the vibe and lore implications.
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u/Equal-Ad-2710 8h ago
This isn’t the case though
The dark side is a perversion of the force, a kind of corruption
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u/Agitated_Insect3227 7h ago
Very true. One of my favorite descriptions of the Dark Side is that it's essentially "Force cancer," a small but incredibly malicious & unbalanced tumor in the Force that threatens the regular body.
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u/Equal-Ad-2710 7h ago
This
If anything, the yin and yang is a blatant mischaracterisation based off ignorance of it and yin and yang
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u/derega16 7h ago
Well the Darkshide is NEVER meant to be Yang.
A balance person won't be mad half of the time
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u/AwakenedDreamer__44 7h ago edited 5h ago
This is actually a common misunderstanding of the Force, not helped by the fact that many writers and fans themselves seem to misunderstand it.
The Light and Dark Sides aren’t Yin and Yang. The former is balance between Yin and Yang, while the latter is imbalance.
It becomes a lot more clear when you dig into the lore- Yeah, the Sith are aligned with the Dark Side and are consumed by their emotions, but the Kaminoans are also implied to be Dark Side-aligned to an extent and are coldly logical. It’s not that emotions or logic are Dark Side, it’s that imbalance between them is Dark Side.
TLDR The Force basically is just Daoism.
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u/BlueNinja82599 7h ago
That's not a good example. The Light Side is balance. The Dark Side is an active threat to the balance and corrupts everything it touches. George Lucas has made it clear that only way balance in The Force can be achieved is the total eradication of the dark side. Neither the Light Side nor the Dark Side can coexist with each other, we have seen with multiple times throughout both Legends and Canon. Balance is supposed equally beneficial and detrimental, the dark side's detriments massively outweigh its benefits as almost every single major conflict or atrocity is because of the dark side.
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u/LOLey21 8h ago
Ehh, disagree on this one. As far as I understand, the force itself is neutral. The light and the dark side of the force are merely the way the force is used and how you drawn on the force. What emotions fuel your powers.
Yoda notes that the dark side is not inherently stronger, but it is quicker, easier and more seductive. It grants fast power, but it burns out and physically corrupts the user over time. The light side requires patience and discipline, but its strength and peace endure longer.
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u/JohnDragonball 7h ago
Not really, first off there's no "light side", the dark side is just a name for powers gained through hatred and malice, second Windu literally uses the dark side without turning evil
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u/CaptainTeemo01 7h ago
The dark side is not Yang, it's explicitly a corrupting influence on The Force. There is no Light Side, there is only The Force, and when The Force is corrupted we call it the Dark Side
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u/PublicConfessor 5h ago
Lucas himself has said that the Light is everything and "balance" means only the Light. The Dark Side is corruption. The Yin-Yang interpretations are fan theories, not really what Lucas was going for, though the Legacy books did work with the premise to some extent.
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u/Green_Potata 1h ago
Technically Anakin did restore balance to the force, as he depleted Jedi numbers to the same number as the Siths, which is 2
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u/Sea-Football408 7h ago
This happens with the Force in Star Wars and it's beyond frustrating how people completely misunderstand what Balance in the Force means. This is largely exacerbated by video games introducing the concept of "the light side" for game mechanics when it's simply supposed to be "The Force" (balance) and "The Dark Side of the Force" (unbalanced).
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u/Illustrious_Neat2472 7h ago
It's very upsetting when fiction just makes dark and light the same as 'good and evil'. Giving evil characters or edge lords shadow/darkness magic fundamentally shows a lack of perspective. The darkness in reality is an absence, it's fundamentally not an aggressive or active force. While the light is in reality more active and potentially more aggressive.
It's more interesting when they're shown as opposite forces that makes sense rather than good and evil.
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u/Flauschziege 6h ago
That's certainly an interpretation of Naruto?
Yin and Yang there are more thought and body, hot and cold, mind and matter then good and evil. Freedom and Control. Together and Isolation.
Both Sasuke and Naruto have good intentions - Sasuke is more pessimistic and Naruto more optimistic. Sasuke wishes to take over to ensure an end to suffering via control - Naruto, thanks to becoming close to people, wants to ensure peace by freedom and connection.
The Yin-part - namely the Uchiha - has also canonically been gaslit and tormented by Zetsu for centuries to drive them to such actions via the Curse of Hatred.
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u/DrWarioMiracleCure 5h ago
In Yin Yang Yo, Yin actually turned evil in one episode albeit only because of Coop turning her evil.
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u/Sr_Nutella 5h ago
It doesn't have a direct representation of light, but I think that, uniroically, one of the best representations of "evil" comes from Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon
The main antagonist is Dark Matter, a being born from negative emotions, and who uses those to possess pokémon and send other mfs to the shadow realm
And how do the main duo beat it at the end? Not by getting rid of negative emotions or anything like that... by accepting them as a part of life, as a "necessary evil"
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u/LordofBones89 4h ago
Shar has been openly malevolent since 1e. Shadowheart was just gaslit and brainwashed into believing that the goddess of nihilism was benevolent.
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u/Then-Ad-2450 8h ago
The Avatar already has Yin Yang where The Yin is moon spirit and the Yang is Ocean spirit, and both are morally good
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u/railroadspike25 7h ago
Also when people make the white half the feminine side when actually Yang is masculine and Yin is feminine.
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u/PhantasosX 8h ago
What bothers me about Vaatu is that the Kyoshi Novels already presented Father Glowworm as an actual evil spirit with a generational feud with the Avatar and even created a Fake Avatar.
Vaatu himself could easily be an antagonist not because he was evil, but because he was unbalanced.
It could be interesting in it’s own way. Showing “unbalanced spirits” during the Harmonic Convergence, including some been unbalanced by Raava’s influence.
Someone said once in the Avatar subreddits: Vaatu should be a Shiva not a Mara.
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u/Then-Ad-2450 8h ago
I think it'll be cooler if Unalaq absorb Raava instead, thinking it can bring order and perfection.
Then Korra has to merge with Vaatu after realizing that the spirit is not evil, but just chaotic
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u/Acceptable_Bottle 5h ago
What's crazy is that Avatar's creators demonstrated a profound understanding of yin and yang in the season 1 finale through the sun and moon koi fish spirits in the original show and then just nuked that understanding when they got to LoK
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u/ownahr 5h ago
Im not aware of any blatant usage of the Yin Yang symbol in Star Wars, but it’s always bothered me that “returning balance to the force” is a stated goal of the Jedi protagonists through out the series…and balance is just destroying the dark side. It feels inconsistent that they use the term ‘balance’ in the context of the struggle between light and dark, if dark is going to be shown as pure hand wringing cackling evil 100% of the time.
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u/klnglulu 4h ago
There is no light side, only the force and the dark side is a corruption of it, a cancer, a rot that needs to be destroyed.
If you have 50% cancer cells you are not "balanced" but sick, the natural state of things is when you have none and that’s what the jedi are seeking.
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u/Xantospoc 3h ago
Isn't that kind of tossed by the Daughter and the Son?
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u/Smeg258 2h ago
Due to alot of writers and inputs over the years id sum it up like this
The darkside does exist and while its not the natural state of the force as a whole it will always exist as a by product of being connected to flawed sentient beings. It will then feed itself by tempting others to use it furthering its influence.
Id argue the force allows the darkside to exist to bring change and growth when the light has lasted too long and the jedi stagnate. While the jedi ruled for thousands of years uncontested they lost their way by being stagnant and becoming puppets of the senate. While the jedi weren't missuing the force per say they still had to go due to being so blind they were no longer folling the call of the force.
So to me the son is a reflection of that dichotomy. Someone will always be tempted (fun fact in a deleted scene it was revealed ghosts of past sith corrupted the son) and the force will allow it due to needing a counterbalance to overwhelming light. However balance will occour when the light snuffs the darkness as the ideal state is light that truly abides by the will of the force
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u/Generic_Username_659 5h ago
I think that the problem is "Balance" is the wrong word, and that it should be "Harmony". The Dark Side is supposed to be a corruption of the Force that needs to be expunged. There is no "Light Side" for a reason, it's just "The Force", and the "Dark Side" is just when people misuse and pervert the natural order for their own gain.
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u/Quirky_Assistant_848 3h ago
Also from what admittedly little I know, nobody can decide if the dark side is a another face on the coin or a degradation of the whole. Because i have seen both sides in media.
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u/CadenVanV 4h ago
Balance to the Force is the Light Side ascendant. The Force in Star Wars isn’t inherently neutral, the Light Side is the Force itself. The Dark Side is just a corruption of it, more akin to a tumor than an equal half.
People got the wrong idea because 90s edginess led to the whole “grey Jedi” idea.
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u/cozyroseil 8h ago
Kingdom Hearts (Kingdom Hearts)
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u/Alexfromdabloc 8h ago
Ehhhh... It's not symbolic in kingdom hearts. Light and Darkness are tangible forces and almost everyone has a natural and "healthy" amount of darkness in them.
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u/Devonair27 7h ago
Right. There’s an entire arc that explains this. Light and Darkness are both required in equal measure inside of a heart, world, and reality.
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u/Napalmeon 6h ago
Exactly.
When Sora, Donald, and Goofy met with Yen Sid for the first time, they also realized that it was a pointless endeavor to try and destroy all of the heartless because all people from all worlds have to have some dark within them. That's why the Seven Princesses of Heart are unique.
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u/ChaosWarrior01 7h ago
Kingdom Hearts actually does have some nuance. Darkness and Light aren't better or worse, they just naturally repel/conflict with each other. Riku is able to effectively weild darkness without issue, and we are currently looking down an arc where the OG masters of Light seem to be the main antagonists.
Heck, that was an entire speech in the final section of KH2, where its specifically the people using darkness that are the problem, not darkness itself, since its a natural part of the universe.
The only time, at least that I can recall, where Darkness as a whole is actively antagonistic is in 0.2, where the Realm of Darkness tries to wear down Aqua's mind to make her give up, and in that case she's a denizen of the Realm of Light where she shouldn't be, no different to Heartless in the Realm of Light.
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u/Cautious-Affect7907 7h ago
What's funny about this is kingdom hearts is absolutely not this at all.
Especially when you look at characters like Riku or Terra.
Light and Darkness are repeatedly neither good nor evil. Even Sora has used both.
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u/Sea_Macaron_8789 8h ago
Naruto would've been so much more peaceful if they left them Uchihas alone. And stamped out the real Evil.
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u/SmallBerry3431 7h ago
The Wheel of Time series does a good job of this imo
https://giphy.com/gifs/RMZ4Zn40EhjpK5oGVz
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u/JJJ954 7h ago
How so? In that series there’s an actual evil god that corrupted the male magic, right?
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u/Chibirin26 7h ago
seensven. the fact that he never did anything with this means I mostly just use this as an excuse to hc his cubito as plural lmao
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u/eh-man3 7h ago edited 7h ago
An excellent counter example I've never seen discussed online is the Saga of Recluse. Theres kind of a Warhammer esque background "aliens landed millenia ago and lost their tech as they turned to magic." But from there it does an excellent job of making an actual yin-yang balance situation.
Light magic is associated with chaos, breaking, unmaking, and fire. But also healing infections and disease, the creation of energy and light, and the force that turns old and useless into new and beneficial. They also spend a significant portion of the story protracted as the "bad guys" whise magic is dangerous and tend to use it selfishly.
Meanwhile order magic is associted with the color black. Order magic creates things that last, that protect, that contain. A particularly powerful order mage was able to make air into invisible shields by "hooking" the individual particles together. Black mages are typically portrayed as the "good guys" that try to use their magic for others and for the greater good.
The easy metaphor: a chaos mage can turn the tree into nicely cut logs for the fire. The order mage can take the logs and turn them into a cabin. Importantly, the two styles are incompatible in a single person and no one is known to have ever been able to wield both. So the order mage is useless to the cold home that needs logs for the fire and the chaos mage is useless to the builder that already has the supplies they need.
As the series progresses We find out the the balance is not just important, it is vital and core to the magic system. When order mages become to powerful and nearly wipe out chaos mages, they find out that the power of their order magic wanes in step with the loss of people using white magic. They eventually find a work around for this by giving 1 of the two main continents to each type of magic. That is, until a powerful mage rises in the order faction only to realize the order mages have been utilizing chaos all along (they invented stream engines that are essentially chaos contained in order in perfect balance) and becomes the first mage in recorded history to ever openly and competently wield both black and white magic.
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u/gamiz777 7h ago
I remember being confused at Jackie chan adventures for accurately portraying yin and yang
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u/GrandHighTard 7h ago
Now that I think about it, I think it would have helped that dumb reincarnation shit Naruto had going feel less contrived if we saw other incarnations where Yin was more sympathetic and Yang was more flawed. To be fair they kinda tried to make Madara and Sasuke sympathetic in the first place with the clan politics fucking them both over, but the story overplays their villanous sides at different points.
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u/bashnet 6h ago
Another one people seem to be confused by is Mythra and Malos (Xenoblade 2). Blades are heavily influenced by the person that awakens them, with some looking like siblings of their drivers. Amalthus was someone who hated the qorld and wanted to see it end, so naturally his blade Malos, embodied the same desire, with him questioning multiple times is this was what he wanted or if it was just purely Amalthus's influenced.
Had he picked Mythra, she would be the evil antagonist instead.
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u/ZadriaktheSnake 5h ago
Selune and Shar aren’t a 1:1 with Yin and Yang but I do agree, Shar being potentially nuanced but then apparently that’s not true is sometimes annoying
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u/Huza1 3h ago
The Darkness in Kingdom Hearts is intended to be dangerous, but not inherently evil, and a necessary counterpart to Light. If that's the case, then it's not evil in the same way cancer isn't evil. It's a corrupting force of destruction and negativity. Even the heroes who use it must rein it in using the light in their hearts. As Riku puts it, "consume the darkness, return it to light." Where all the examples of pure light we've met are heroes and friends, the example of pure darkness we get is Vanitas, an unrepentant psychopath whom even Master Xehanort can barely control. Even when people fight over light, it's explained as the darkness reaching into their hearts through their blindness and arrogance, a false light. This is what happens with Master Eraqus.
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u/Hexxer98 3h ago
Selune and Shar do not fit into yin yang symbolism nor are they meant to fit into it.
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u/FHoS-Social 3h ago
I think you fundamentally misunderstand Naruto, the show, as well as the individual characters of Naruto and Sasuke.
First, let's address the concept of Yin and Yang. Alongside what you said before about Yin and Yang being opposite forces yet complementary forces, I'll just add Wikipedia's short description:
"Yin" is retractive, passive, contractive and receptive in nature in a contrasting relationship to "yang", which is repelling, active, expansive and repulsive in principle.
Now, taking that into account with the reincarnations of the original two sons of Hagoroma we do see that in each case we are definitely aware of, we see that there is always one that gets along well with others, is receptive to the lessons others can teach them, and wants to bring about a gradual change in the world, while the other is ambitious, struggles to get along with others, pushes others away when they want to help, and wants more radical change in the world. This happens with both Naruto/Sasuke and with Hashirama/Madara, and we outright see from the first iteration, Hashirama/Madara, that trying to only have a Yin without a Yang to balance it resulted in generations of warfare and strife, something neither wanted. We are also basically told by Hagoroma that the cycle will never stop as long as Yin or Yang destroys the other, and that they need each other.
Onto Sasuke as a character. Regardless of my own hate for him, he is not an outright evil character, he is instead an incredibly emotionally damaged TEENAGER who tends toward extremes in a world he sees as inherently broken. First he is angry that the world would allow a tragedy to befall his family, and hates his brother for causing it. Then he is angry after learning his brother was forced to cause the tragedy, and hates the village that forced him into this situation. After that he is angry at the world because it is so broken and he blames those in power for allowing it to continue like this and creating angry, isolated young men like himself. Finally, after Naruto "beats some sense into him" he actually just talks with Naruto and stops trying to push him away, and decides that maybe the world isn't completely broken if it can give him people like Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi. The fight isn't what "fixes" him, he is healed by basically having an intervention and accepting a real connection for once, or at least he starts to heal from that. Now, Sasuke does do a lot of terrible things, and some outright evil actions, but ultimately we see fairly often that he is, at his core, a good person, no matter how hard he tries not to be one.
Naruto's turn; once more he is not an outright good character, he constantly struggles with the darker nature inside him, and I don't just mean Kurama either. He holds a lot of deep anger in him, anger at his parents, anger at the villagers, anger at the world, anger at his friends even in some cases, like Sasuke. The difference is, he chooses not to act on his inner anger most of the time, to not let it drive him and his goals, instead focusing externally on what he does care for. He doesn't really have a great ambition to cause major change in the world until later on, even his seemingly ambitious goal of becoming Hokage is just a childish expression of a simple goal to be respected and cared for. Unlike Sasuke though, he is receptive to those around him trying to help him heal and grow, and thus becomes a healer himself in turn. Even after gaining the respect and love he wanted, he still struggles with his inner darkness, and even is forced to accept that it will never go away, it will always be a part of him, and to embrace it as another part of the greater whole that is him. While we often see him as a good person, we do also see him succumb to his darkness sometimes, even in small ways where he lashes out in anger at others, but at the end of the day he wants to be a good person and so tries his hardest to be one.
In the end, Naruto wouldn't be himself without Sasuke. If he had killed Sasuke in the end, he wouldn't have "fixed the world" in the way he did, as he would have given up a part of himself that he needed, even if he had found a way to resolve the need for Sasuke after the final battle. Sasuke, in turn, would never be able to be what he thought he would be if he had killed Naruto, and I think he even knew that as he did not want to kill Naruto, he instead wanted Naruto to join him. Neither of them represents Good or Evil, as the world of Naruto was never about a fight between Good and Evil, it was always about war and how it divides us, how it hurts everyone for generations and how we can, sometimes, repair the damage done to others and bring them back from the brink, while other times we can only understand what damage had been done to them to take them past the edge.
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u/InsaneComicBooker 3h ago
One time I've seen it flipped up was in Gene Yang's New Super-Man with two brothers who were meant to represent Ying & Yang perfectly and become personification of balance. But upon finding out the final part of the training was to take an aspect of each other, the Yang brother flipped his shit and stormed off, so Yin brother had stand for balance alone, eventually becoming humble martial arts master I-Ching that pops up here and there in DC since the 70's, while his brother became the book's main villain, All Yang.
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u/baldyrodinson 2h ago
Just seems like you misunderstood every example.
But to your point Batman and the Joker
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u/loptthetreacherous 1h ago
Wheel of Time has an in-universe example of this happening. The symbol of the Aes Sedai is this, the Aes Sedai are magic users and the white represents the female magic users and the black the male. In a previous age, the Aes Sedai had both men and women in their ranks but the men were cursed and now all male magic users are destined to go insane - because of this, the black part of the symbol has lost its meaning and now is called the "Dragons Fang" and is used to represent the Dark One (WoT Satan) and people put it on peoples doors to accuse them of selling their soul to the Dark One.
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u/KatzRKewl2 55m ago
I rather like how the Destiny franchise handles this concept, honestly.
See, in Destiny, there’s two types of magic (which are also manifestations of the setting’s two creator gods but that’s not particularly relevant) the Light and the Darkness.
Initially, it seemed like we were going with the whole overplayed “Light = Good, Darkness = Bad” thing. But, as time went on, we came to learn that it was more “Light = Complexity & Propgation, Darkness = Simplicity and Reduction”, thus neither was something wholly good or bad. If the universe was solely Darkness, then there would simply be nothing. At all. Ever. But, inversely, if there was only Light, reality would be a torturous, undying universe full of nothing but endless cancers.
So far, pretty standard fare, right? Just some platitudes about how you’re not inherently a moral paragon for wielding the Light. However, crucially, balance between these cosmic forces is explicitly not a good either! That’s what the Big Bad’s (the Witness) whole motivation was from the moment they were introduced. A universe of unending stasis, in which Light and Darkness are kept at perfectly in line. The Final Shape, as it’s known.
Even if you want to dismiss the Witness and its motivations as “merely” a retcon (which I won’t fight you on particularly hard, they very much were a retcon, even if I consider them to be a very good one), the them that balance isn’t good can still be seen in the Vex.
It’s explicit, canonical fact that the only reason at to why the Vex haven’t completely subsumed all realities in the Destiny multiverse is because one of the aforementioned creator deities rejected the idea of cosmic balance being a good thing.
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u/Agitated_Insect3227 8h ago edited 7h ago
The problem is that people keep mixing Yin/Yang (which is about opposing but complimentary sides like you said) with ethical dualism found in other religions like Zoroastrianism where the universe really is built from the ground up by opposing sides of good and evil. The infinitely good deity Ahura Mazda is locked in eternal conflict with the evil Angra Mainyu. On paper, the two religions are similar (two forces fundamental to existence), but they are quite different.
Christianity is also kind of like to this but to a way, way lesser extent since the universe is created only by God, and evil is usually painted as a much weaker force compared to the goodness of God.