Dark Is Not Evil/Headscratchers

• Why is it that this page and Light Is Not Good are flooded with examples, but Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil are near empty?
  • Because those are new pages in comparison.
  • And honestly the vast majority of media works end up using Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil, rendering only the most noteworthy examples the ones being listed. By contrast, in spite of the huge amount of examples present, Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil are the still by far much more rare.
• Is it just me, or this trope ends up being more subverted than Light Is Not Good?
  • It's sort of difficult to subvert Light Is Not Good because the whole point of that trope is that people already expect the guys under it to be good. It's supposed to be a shock when they are evil. While people may be willing to give dark characters the benefit of the doubt enough to make subversions possible.
  • Technically, both are subversions already...
    • Yes, but there are occasional cases in which there is a double subversion.
• The usage of expressions like "black hearted" or "black sheep" to define evil dark characters while reffering to this trope (example: reffering to the evil Golgari members on this very page as "black hearted"). Hum, guys, you realise the hypocrisy of that, right?
  • The distinction between "dark" as evil and "dark" as dark is a real one, like the distinction between "fly" as an insect and "fly" as a pants zipper. Just as someone who says "fly" to mean an insect needn't be called hypocritical for also calling a pants zipper a "fly," one can easily switch between the two definitions of "dark." (Consider, for instance, Gunga Din, which comments on how the dark-skinned title character would be classified as "white" in morality.)
  • Besides, many of those terms are antiquated, from times when people were much more superstitious about things like the darkness and omens of evil.
• When stories have this trope as the main theme, it also usually carries the moral that not everybody has bad in them. These stories also tend to have Light Is Not Good uber-evil hypocritical Jerkasses for villains. Why?
  • About the best idea I can come up with is that it's not the power that makes you evil, it's what you do with that power that defines you. Unfortunately, as some articles here show, people tend to be afraid of what they don't understand, and darkness tends to be one of those things.
  • That's not my question. Let me word it better. Why do stories with this trope tend to say, "Nobody is completely evil, it's not all Black and White Morality" then have completely evil villains who are only pretending to be good (e.g. mixing Satan Is Good with God Is Evil)? Isn't that missing their own point?
  • It might be a juxtaposition. Showing a character who looks evil that is good, against a known evil acting good. Or, a Gray and Grey Morality showing one is a darker shade of gray. Like having a Judas character alongside a Satan character.
    • Quite. It gets somewhat bland if both the good guys and the bad guys use black magic and/ore are dirty fighters who Would Hit a Girl, as well as anything else, really, even puppies.So, if Dark Is Not Evil is in play, Light Is Not Good just complements the crap out of it.

• The nature of discussing this trope loses objectivity when there is no real defined meaning of what something does or is, that makes them a dark character, and it tends to be an overrused buzz word to imply something cool. What is it? Is it dark as in void of light and doesn't absorb brightness? Does the brightness symbolize hope, joy and optimism (resulting in a character that is cynical and moody?) or does the light in question refer to the realization or guilt of mind tricks or empathy of which the character is not affected by (implying that a dark character is one that is almost sociopathic)? Or does it simply imply someone that doesn't play honourably, and fights dirty? I 'unno, I see people throw the word dark around all the time, but it's never quite clear what it means.
  • In the context of this trope, it's a character that looks like the traditional stereotypes associated with darkness, like dark clothes, dark magic, associations with death, et cetera. Characters clearly meant to invoke "darkness" or "light" have always a distinct look associated with them.