History Main / BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil

-->-- '''Death the Kid''', ''Anime/SoulEater''

* In ''Literature/TheSagaOfRecluce'' the Balance of Order and Chaos is a quantifiable phenomena. Order and Chaos are the basic components of the world, tightly bound together to create matter. Mages who use only Order or Chaos release an equal amount of the other component into the world. As such, the more an Order-mage creates, the more Chaos will be available for a Chaos-mage to wield. This poses the largest problem for Order-mages as Ordered creations are enduring while Chaos is fleeting; there is almost always a surplus of the latter. Chaos and Order are not Good and Evil, as illustrated by heroes throughout the series who wield one or the other, or even, in rare cases, both in equal measure. Absolute Order is death, as living things need to change, evolve and grow (a form of Chaos) but also need structure (a form of Order) or they will collapse. Usually only the central character is really conscious of it and strives to maintain the Balance, while the wizards on either side try to have *more* Order or Chaos, which usually backfires. [[spoiler: Both Fairhaven and Recluce are destroyed, at different times, by Gray wizards]]. The Chaos Wizards wear white and their city is Fairhaven, while Order Mages wear black and Nylan is the Black City.

** Zein itself epitomizes the lack of a positive quality to balance its own twisted sense of justice. Ironically, for someone who proclaims itself as a BenevolentAI, Zein is unable to process anything that resembles kindness and compassion, coupled with its [[BlackAnsWhiteInsanity warped understanding of right and wrong]], resulting in it [[{{Ubermensch}} living on its own personal morality and seeks to rewrite the rules of the world the way it sees fit]].

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'' introduces another force of balance--the Bendu, who lives on Atollon and describes himself as "the one in the middle" of the light and dark sides.

* In ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'', the Mortis arc introduces The Ones, who are [[PhysicalGod living embodiments of the Force]]. While the Daughter represents the Light Side, the Son represents the DarkSide and the Father is the balance between both sides. While on the surface it might seem a fairly standard case of this trope, with both the Father and Son expressing the sentiment that there's no light without dark, upon closer investigation of the story it becomes clear it's a deconstruction. The Father might claim to be the Balance, but in reality, all he does is keep the selfish Son leashed, because the Daughter, who's selfless, doesn't want to upset the Balance of the Force and the Galaxy in the first place. Father refuses to see this, due to his emotional attachment to both his children, and instead tries to use this trope to rationalize letting Son live, despite knowing the repercussions of Son getting free. In other words, Father himself is being selfish, both towards the Son, by imprisoning him against his will, and towards the Galaxy by letting a selfish creature who'd wreak havoc on it live. Father then tops off his mistake by dragging Anakin into it, hoping to push the responsibility of keeping Son in check onto TheChosenOne. Anakin's own selfish refusal to accept said responsibility results in Son seizing the opportunity to rebel, unintentionally killing Daughter (who took the blow meant for Father) in the process, which even Son was upset about. Balance is ultimately restored by Father commiting suicide, thus sealing away Son's power (since the Force is created by life, if all life is destroyed, there's no Force and no Dark Side), allowing Anakin to mortally wound him.

* In ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'', the Mortis arc introduces The Ones who are [[PhysicalGod living embodiment of the force]]. While the Daughter represents the Light Side, the Son represents the DarkSide and the Father is the balance between both sides. While on the surface it might seem a fairly standard case of this trope, with both the Father and Son expressing the sentiment that there's no light without dark, upon closer investigation of the story it becomes clear it's a deconstruction. The Father might claim to be the Balance, but in reality, all he does is keep the selfish Son leashed, because the Daughter, who's selfless, doesn't want to upset the Balance of the Force and the Galaxy in the first place. Father refuses to see this, due to his emotional attachment to both his children, and instead tries to use this trope to rationalize letting Son live, despite knowing the repercussions of Son getting free. In other words, Father himself is being selfish, both towards the Son, by imprisoning him agaisnt his will, and towards the Galaxy by letting a selfish creature who'd wreak havoc on it live. Father then tops off his mistake, by dragging Anakin into it, hoping to push the responsibility of keeping Son in-check onto TheChosenOne. Anakin's own selfish refusal to accept said responsibility, results in Son seizing the opportunity to rebel, killing Daughter (who took the blow for the Father) in proccess. Balance is ultimately restored by Father commiting suicide, thus sealing away Son's power (since the Force is created by life, if all life is destroyed, there's no Force and no Dark side), allowing Anakin to mortally wound him.

* ''{{VideoGame/Diablo}}'':

** As the Alicorn god of Ponykind, [[GodEmperor Golden Scepter]] is essentially this trope since he embodies both Ponykind's good and bad traits. It's because of this that Golden Scepter has to constantly regulate his own actions and behavior with a "balance check" where he must know Good to do Evil, while doing Good requires knowing Evil. Favoring one side over the other will either lead to him becoming an incompetent puppet for his subjects to manipulate or a divine tyrant that would be eventually overthrown, the latter which happened to him and nearly ended his life during the Imperium era. Ironically, despite being an ancient god, this trope makes him more "human" than a large majority of the Codexverse's gods, and learning about the GoodNeedsEvil philosophy from Belyolen and Temnobog during [[WalkingTheEarth one of his adventures]] was what allowed him to become a very successful ruler come the Fourth Age. It's also because he embodies Ponykind's dual morality that Belyolen and Temnobog have started respected and even befriended him, as in their eyes, [[ForWantOfANail he represents the god and ruler they could have been had their father, Irminsul, not tried to erase the flaws of his then-unborn son]].

* In ''Literature/AmosDaragon'', a person (the "mask wearer") is chosen to keep a balance on good and evil and both sides are more nuanced than they appear. The series is filled with LightIsNotGood and DarkIsNotEvil. There are plenty of "Dark" creatures which don't want to massacre humans, yet get hunted down for no other reason than they exist. In fact, the last couple books involve [[spoiler:stopping a crusade to wipe out the creatures of the night]]. The protagonist's job is to [[spoiler:Stop the war between the gods]], not kill all evil creatures.

* ''Anime/MagicalProjectS'' had re-establishing the Balance as its main goal, represented by a giant set of scales that adjusted themselves after every Sammy victory. [[note]] 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. 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, but this is an AffectionateParody of MagicalGirl shows, so [[MST3KMantra you really should relax]][[/note]].

* [[SadlyMythtaken Contrary to popular belief]], not present in UsefulNotes/{{Taoism}} or anything else that uses the yin-yang symbol. Yin and Yang represent harmony through complementary opposites like [[DarkIsNotEvil dark]]/[[LightIsNotGood light]], female/male, earth/sky, etc. In such philosophies, morality is seen as a social construct rather than a cosmic absolute (like in Zoroastrianism). The closest thing to 'evil' in the western sense is anything that ''disrupts'' harmony, i.e., not part of yin or yang.

* ''WesternAnimation/YinYangYo'': early on season 1, Yin and Yang got rid of their worst traits, Yin's bossiness and Yang's agression. Master Yo then said that everybody needs their good and bad traits to be complete, much to everybody's (viewers included) confusion. However, this action aslo led to the birth of [[EvilCounterpart Yuck]], and Yin and Yang found that their bad traits helped them into being better warriors (Yin's bossiness helped her to come up with plans and strategies, and Yang's aggression gave him the motivation to fight).