Balance Between Good and Evil: Difference between revisions

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Basically, Good and Evil are unionized, and have rules they must follow. These rules are usually towards overall self-preservation; no one side is allowed to "win" too much, and the [[Big Good]] and [[Big Bad]] restrict their fighting to a [[Divine Chessboard]] rather than going at it in person.

At times, this can get silly, with there being no reason behind ''why'' the absence of evil would be a bad thing<ref> arguably, the ''definition'' of "evil" is "that which would better the world by its absence"</ref>. Sometimes this is explained with the universe becoming [[Good Is Boring|boring]], society stagnating or collapsing from within in the absence of something to struggle against or giving people a chance to show [[Seven Heavenly Virtues|real nobility and virtue]] by risking their lives to defend each other. Other times, its ''enforced'' by depicting [[Utopia|ultimate good]] as repressive (often [[Lawful Stupid]]), or by declaring positive or neutral concepts such as [[The Evils of Free Will|free will]] or [[Ambition Is Evil|ambition]] as evil. This can confuse people who equate Good (the opposite of Evil) with good (the opposite of bad), as preserving the Balance of Good and Bad eventually means that you have to, for example, defend a [[Complete Monster|murderous rapist's]] right to murder and rape. In those cases, "Good" and "Evil" become something more similar to physical forces like "Hot" and "Cold" and don't seem to have much to do with morality at all anymore.

At times, this can get silly, with there being no reason behind ''why'' the absence of evil would be a bad thing.<ref>arguably, the ''definition'' of "evil" is "that which would better the world by its absence"</ref> Sometimes this is explained with the universe becoming [[Good Is Boring|boring]], society stagnating or collapsing from within in the absence of something to struggle against or giving people a chance to show [[Seven Heavenly Virtues|real nobility and virtue]] by risking their lives to defend each other. Other times, its ''enforced'' by depicting [[Utopia|ultimate good]] as repressive (often [[Lawful Stupid]]), or by declaring positive or neutral concepts such as [[The Evils of Free Will|free will]] or [[Ambition Is Evil|ambition]] as evil. This can confuse people who equate Good (the opposite of Evil) with good (the opposite of bad), as preserving the Balance of Good and Bad eventually means that you have to, for example, defend a [[Complete Monster|murderous rapist's]] right to murder and rape. In those cases, "Good" and "Evil" become something more similar to physical forces like "Hot" and "Cold" and don't seem to have much to do with morality at all anymore.

Further, only Good seems to ever care about actually respecting the balance, while Evil almost never holds back. This can be especially problematic if [[Evil Only Has to Win Once]] to badly upset the balance. However, the penalty for this is usually permission for the hero to [[Kick the Son of a Bitch|finally kill the villain]]. Occasionally it's reversed with a "Good" [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] and "Bad" [[Anti-Villain]] or [[Villain Protagonist]], invoking [[Light Is Not Good]]. In extreme cases, both the Good and Evil sides are bad and the protagonists form a third party trying to stop either side from taking over. The irony though is that the ''writers'' don't seem to recognize that "good" guys who don't do good things aren't good any more, but rather [[Villain with Good Publicity|villains with good publicity]].

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You can substitute [[Lowest Cosmic Denominator|Light and Darkness]], [[Heaven and Hell]], [[Order Versus Chaos|Order and Chaos]], or any Yin and Yang for Good and Evil with the added bonus of making more sense ~~linguistically--a~~ balance between Order and Chaos probably is better than either extreme.

You can substitute [[Lowest Cosmic Denominator|Light and Darkness]], [[Heaven and Hell]], [[Order Versus Chaos|Order and Chaos]], or any Yin and Yang for Good and Evil with the added bonus of making more sense linguistically—a balance between Order and Chaos probably is better than either extreme.

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Slayers]]'' runs on this heavily. The ultimate balancing deity is [[Guardian of the Multiverse|The Lord of Nightmares]], and she made four worlds, each ruled and balanced by one Shinzoku ("godly race") lord and one Mazoku ("evil race") lord. Each group has its own set of generals and henchmen. The Shinzoku [[The Gods Must Be Lazy|don't give a flying fuck about humanity as long as their omnipotent source of knowledge, the Clair Bible, is protected, and balance is maintained.]] The Mazoku [[~~Always Chaotic~~ Evil|will act and upset the balance of power when they can.]] In protagonist Lina Inverse's world (named the "Red World" according to [[Word of God]]), the Mazoku lord is Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo, who was split into seven pieces long ago; Lina and her ragtag group destroys one, and they also kill off two of his five highest-ranking generals by the third season. Further more, they also destroy ''another'' Mazoku lord from another world! So far, this has had no real effect on the world, but certain magic spells that draw power from the Mazoku generals no longer exist.

* ''[[Slayers]]'' runs on this heavily. The ultimate balancing deity is [[Guardian of the Multiverse|The Lord of Nightmares]], and she made four worlds, each ruled and balanced by one Shinzoku ("godly race") lord and one Mazoku ("evil race") lord. Each group has its own set of generals and henchmen. The Shinzoku [[The Gods Must Be Lazy|don't give a flying fuck about humanity as long as their omnipotent source of knowledge, the Clair Bible, is protected, and balance is maintained.]] The Mazoku [[Exclusively Evil|will act and upset the balance of power when they can.]] In protagonist Lina Inverse's world (named the "Red World" according to [[Word of God]]), the Mazoku lord is Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo, who was split into seven pieces long ago; Lina and her ragtag group destroys one, and they also kill off two of his five highest-ranking generals by the third season. Further more, they also destroy ''another'' Mazoku lord from another world! So far, this has had no real effect on the world, but certain magic spells that draw power from the Mazoku generals no longer exist.

* ''[[Magical Project S]]'' basically had re-establishing the Balance as its main goal, represented by a giant set of scales that adjusted themselves after every Sammy victory. Convenient! <ref>Course, you could argue that since every Sammy victory was just her vanquishing the Evil introduced specifically to fight her in the first place by Pixy Misa, there should be no net gain in Good over Evil. But this is an [[Affectionate Parody]] of [[Magical Girl]] shows, so [[MST3K Mantra|you really should relax]].</ref>

** And the scales only ''really'' started to tip the other way after she found a problem that was preexisting; Misao's sad life, and fixed it. Hmm...

* ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'' has the Doublet System, which prevents gods and demons from slaughtering each other by imposing a Mutually Assured Destruction scheme on both sides. Small conflicts are allowed, even encouraged, but outright celestial warfare is forbidden.

** Hild, the leader of the demons, has tried to subvert the Doublet System and shift the balance in her favor by inducing [[Face Heel Turn~~|Face Heel Turns~~]] among the gods. Thus far she's been unsuccessful, and given the nature of the series it'll probably remain that way.

** Hild, the leader of the demons, has tried to subvert the Doublet System and shift the balance in her favor by inducing [[Face Heel Turn]]s among the gods. Thus far she's been unsuccessful, and given the nature of the series it'll probably remain that way.

*** It's later revealed that what Hild does care about is the balance, the reason she antagonizes the goddesses is that {{spoiler|their presence in the Morisato home actually causes an imbalance that she needs to rectify}}. Off course, the reason she does is because of {{spoiler|her daughter, the goddess Urd}}.

*** Meanwile, {{spoiler|Hagall and her crew}} don't care about the balance and just want to increase the demons "market share" This quickly causes the world to erupt into hilarious chaos.

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* In ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Willow's resurrection of Buffy at the beginning of season six allegedly caused an imbalance that created an opportunity for the First Evil to become the Big Bad for season seven (now that there's an army of Slayers, the balance must have snapped like an elastic band). Whistler from "Becoming" Parts 1 and 2 identifies himself as an agent of the Balance, although some fans argue that he was actually an agent of Good who identified himself as Balance because he worked to counteract other "demons" who were apparently predominantly evil.

* Often occurs on ''[[Charmed]]'' so they can have conflict with the [[Powers That Be]] who act like their bosses. One example that really stands out is a multi-part episode in which it was revealed that the [[Balance Between Good and Evil]] is preserved by a [[Mirror Universe]] - if good wins in one universe, evil wins in the other and balances it out. Traveling between them disrupted the balance and made the normal universe "too good" - the sun never sets, everyone is freakishly happy all the time, and [[Disproportionate Retribution|minor crimes like leaving your cell phone on in a library are punished by mutilation]] ([[Fridge Logic|instead of the suddenly-too-good people just leaving their cellphones turned off]]). A more reasonable person would consider mutilation to be evil.

* Often occurs on ''[[Charmed]]'' so they can have conflict with the [[Powers That Be]] who act like their bosses. One example that really stands out is a multi-part episode in which it was revealed that the Balance Between Good and Evil is preserved by a [[Mirror Universe]] - if good wins in one universe, evil wins in the other and balances it out. Traveling between them disrupted the balance and made the normal universe "too good" - the sun never sets, everyone is freakishly happy all the time, and [[Disproportionate Retribution|minor crimes like leaving your cell phone on in a library are punished by mutilation]] ([[Fridge Logic|instead of the suddenly-too-good people just leaving their cellphones turned off]]). A more reasonable person would consider mutilation to be evil.

** Somewhat tangential, but one shouldn't forget that in the similarly-disrupted evil balance, the same sort of [[Disproportionate Retribution|mutilation]] was enacted for such trivial niceties as saying "Gesundheit" when someone sneezed.

*** Essentially, the point being made was that Good and Evil cannot tolerate the others' existence, and therefore in a world dominated by one, any act (no matter how minor) that runs contrary to the ideals of either is punished harshly. It is the mix of the two that provides tolerance and temperance.

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* Game theory, used in fields as diverse as economics and evolutionary biology, is concerned with quantitative evaluation of competing strategies for success. Except under extreme, usually-temporary circumstances, most game theory analyses of alternative strategies (cooperation vs. conflict, high vs. low investment, fair dealing vs. deception, etc) find that it's the moderate and/or mixed strategies which "win" in the long term, providing the most gain for the least cost. Balance prevails, either due to moderate strategies' success, or rival strategies' persisting side by side at stable frequencies.

** There is a fair amount of selection bias here, however. Situations where a single simple strategy is obviously superior (hence no balance between different ones) are so boring, from a game-theoretic viewpoint, that nobody wastes time doing a formal analysis that would count in this statistic.

** Also mind that many situations in game theory are not zero sum (gain on one side means loss on the other) like the [[Balance Between Good and Evil]] is, so a different set of strategies is required. In zero sum games, cooperation is a ''bad'' idea, since any one player can only gain at the cost of any or all the other players. In such a case, cooperation can only lead to complete equality, with no one ever acting to gain or lose anything.

** Also mind that many situations in game theory are not zero sum (gain on one side means loss on the other) like the Balance Between Good and Evil is, so a different set of strategies is required. In zero sum games, cooperation is a ''bad'' idea, since any one player can only gain at the cost of any or all the other players. In such a case, cooperation can only lead to complete equality, with no one ever acting to gain or lose anything.

* Taken less literally, there's [[wikipedia:Le Chateliers principle|Le Chatelier's principle of equilibria]], where any equilibrium will act to rebalance itself after any disturbances.

* While not a balance of Good and Evil, persay, Newtons third law of motion states that our universe works on this principal, at least on some level.

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*** To be fair to the poor Rokugani, that description of their culture is ''incredibly'' simplistic and '''''very''''' biased. Which makes sense when you're trying to force them into the more rigidly-defined and somewhat Eurocentric morality slots present in D&D alignment systems, but which is ridiculously ethnocentric and borders on [[Values Dissonance]] from a real-world perspective, or even [[Fantastic Racism]].

* In the mythology of ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'', the major source of conflict both in the game and throughout all of reality was the corruption of the force of balance known as the Wyrm. The Wyld (chaos) and the Weaver (order) would simultaneously work to conceive new things and give them form, respectively, and the Wyrm (entropy) would destroy those things whose time had passed in order to provide raw materials (and space) for new things to be created. Eventually, sick of having everything it made torn apart and destroyed, the Weaver entangled the Wyrm in its web, driving the Wyrm insane and turning it into the force of evil and corruption instead of balance and natural decay.

** Apropos of that, the Kitsune (werefoxes) had actually appeared in a book before the release of ''Hengeyokai'', in which they took on a considerably different role; they were cast as the agents of the Balance Wyrm, and were purported to take that responsibility very seriously. Aside from the short write-up in the back of an unrelated sourcebook, though, they never appeared in other material in that form before being [[~~Retcon|retconned~~]] into the tricksters of the Beast Court.

** Apropos of that, the Kitsune (werefoxes) had actually appeared in a book before the release of ''Hengeyokai'', in which they took on a considerably different role; they were cast as the agents of the Balance Wyrm, and were purported to take that responsibility very seriously. Aside from the short write-up in the back of an unrelated sourcebook, though, they never appeared in other material in that form before being [[retcon]]ned into the tricksters of the Beast Court.

== Video Games ==

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* In ''[[The Longest Journey]]'', the worlds of [[Another Dimension|Stark and Arcadia]] are the order and chaos halves of what was once one world. They are kept from remerging destructively by the Guardian of the Balance; said guardian's absence triggers the events of the game.

** In addition, one of the villains had his chaotic essence separated from him, turning him into a cold-hearted and purely rational being while the swirling chaos was released to terrorise Arcadia. It also turns out that {{spoiler|he's the next Guardian , whom the villains caught and separated in an attempt to control him, and before you can have him take up his proper job you have to reintegrate both sides. Once you do that, he becomes a surprisingly nice guy.}}

* The [[Ultimate Evil]] in ''[[Drakengard]]'' actually embodies the [[Balance Between Good and Evil]]. It follows that the only person capable of defeating it ''also'' embodies the [[Balance Between Good and Evil]]. Luckily, the protagonist is just [[Anti-Hero]] enough to do that.

* The [[Ultimate Evil]] in ''[[Drakengard]]'' actually embodies the Balance Between Good and Evil. It follows that the only person capable of defeating it ''also'' embodies the Balance Between Good and Evil. Luckily, the protagonist is just [[Anti-Hero]] enough to do that.

* ''[[Primal]]'' features a balance between Order and Chaos, in which Order mostly functions as Good and Chaos functions as Evil; the game's plot involves the balance being tipped towards Chaos, requiring the protagonist to even things back out.

* Supposedly in ''[[Castlevania]]'', Dracula's very existence fills up the "evil" side of the Balance. In the ''Sorrow'' games, a cult of "good" believes that his previous final defeat was going to mess everything up. Whether this is true isn't known; but in the good ending one character speculates that if a Dark King is needed, then the Universe will provide; no one person ''has'' to be evil.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy III]]'', the Light Warriors learn about an event that happened years ago, affectionately called the Flood of Light, when the essential forces of good became too powerful. At this point, the Dark Warriors emerged, powered by the dark crystals, to beat back the Flood of Light and restore the balance. As it turns out, {{spoiler|the Light Warriors in the game need to call on the old Dark Warriors to defeat the [[Big Bad]] by depowering it. Otherwise [[Curb Stomp Battle|they get wiped out in a blink]].}}

* The necromancers of the ''[[Diablo]]'' franchise base their actions on the notion of a Balance. The novels attempt to (not always successfully) play with this. In one book, the villain is a necromancer who points out that all the necromancers do is fight evil, which doesn't adhere to the concept of a Balance. The hero of the book, another necromancer, continues to fight him, [[Designated Evil|but doesn't bother to explain why he's wrong.]] In another book, the Balance is interestingly defined not as Good and Evil, but Good and the absence of Evil. It's explained that light and dark are not necessarily good and evil, and while the balance tipping to evil would mean torment, the absence of evil would lead to stagnation. One additional point to consider that the Balance is sometimes portrayed (though not described as) not as being between good and evil, but making sure that neither the angels or the demons of the series gain too much of a foothold in the world, as both are jerks. It just so happens that at the time of the second game, the "evil" forces are much more overt in screwing with mortal reality, and only one angel is bothering to do something.

** Apparently the books make it more confusing than the game. In-game materials and the guidebook make it clear that necromancers are [[True Neutral]] or even [[Chaotic Neutral]]. It's just that when the world is completely full of [[~~Always Chaotic~~ Evil]] demons, and there are not one but ''three'' Satan [[Expy~~|Expys~~]] running loose, True or Chaotic Neutral is right there side by side with [[Lawful Good]].

** Apparently the books make it more confusing than the game. In-game materials and the guidebook make it clear that necromancers are [[True Neutral]] or even [[Chaotic Neutral]]. It's just that when the world is completely full of [[Exclusively Evil]] demons, and there are not one but ''three'' Satan [[Expy]]s running loose, True or Chaotic Neutral is right there side by side with [[Lawful Good]].

*** This a running theme with Neutral alignments in pretty much everything, and even mentioned in more than one flavor text description of the Neutral alignments in D&D. In general, even characters utterly devoted toward neutrality and balance will almost always side with Good in the end, especially if the forces of Evil are strong enough. Rarely is there an instance of the opposite occurring, unless the good guys are going the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] route or the Neutral characters lean more towards Evil themselves. It's often stated that Neutral characters begrudgingly admit that Good-aligned characters make slightly more manageable neighbors, as opposed to their much more unpleasant cousins.

* In [[Overlord II]], {{spoiler|Rose, the Overlord's mother}} states that when one force gets too powerful another must rise to stop it, meaning that Darkness is occasionally needed to triumph when heroes eventually [[Fallen Hero|fall from grace]]. [[Evil Overlord|And that Darkness is]] '''[[Villain Protagonist|You]]'''.