Quote Originally Posted by Velaryon View Post
YMMV, but at no point during the Elenium did I ever feel like any of the heroes were in danger, except maybe when one of them (Bevier I think?) was wounded. It wasn't the most egregious example ever, but for me there wasn't enough tension. If Sparhawk & co. had been less likeable, the series wouldn't have worked at all for me.

Falconsbane in the aforementioned Mage Winds trilogy was much worse about this, though.
Didn't read that last one, but I guess I DO have the opposite "mileage" out of the Elenium. Namely because I find the Elenium/Tamuli to be better BECAUSE of the more gritty, harsher feel about it. In the Belgariad/Mallorean, there's just a little too much fatalistic "the Prophecy made this happen and has prepared for any and all eventualities". Don't get me wrong, I love the series, have read it at least 12 times (and am currently wrapping up reading #10 or 11 of Polgara before I dive back into the Elenium).

Quote Originally Posted by lightningcat View Post
My biggest gripe is the Good/Evil are absolutes trope. There is a world of grey and color and very little actual black and white when it comes to people's morality.
And the whole "if you stop being absolutely good, then you become totally evil" has been done so many times and usually badly.
I don't know where that trope exists except for Bad DMs who misinterpret the rules. In 3.5e D&D, for example, Good and Evil exist as objective and cosmic absolutes, yes. That has NO BEARING on people's morality. A person's morality may be just as varied and complex as the real world, but regardless of their perceptions or motivations, there is a faceless, emotionless, cosmic scale by which their actions are judged.

I personally find the blend to be more compelling. Someone may believe themselves to be doing good, and be quite shocked to take damage from a Holy Smite spell.

Quote Originally Posted by 90sMusic View Post
As for the folks talking about the whole black = evil thing, that is just based on the most primitive and instinctual human psychology. From the earliest man Light was seen as a good thing where you could see what you were doing, felt safe in being able to see your surroundings or where to run if danger was after you. Darkness was the first great enemy because you couldn't see what was coming for you, you couldn't see where to run away. Man fears what he doesn't know, what he can't see. So White and Light have always been associated with good while Black and Dark have always been associated with bad/evil.

Someone said it wasn't the same in asian cultures, but that isn't true. One of the most iconic asian symbols, the Yin-Yang is a very basic representation of this same fact that white is good and black is bad, even though that particular symbol is there to indicate there is some dark in the light and some light in the dark.
This was responded to in some measure, and I want to build on it.

Yin-Yangs are, first off, never depicted in black and white in their original forms. If you go to Daoist temples in China you will always see them in Black and Red. This for a few reasons. The most important of which is something that escapes us Westerners on a fundamental level. We depict them in White and Black because we perceive White and Black to be opposites. This could not be farther from the truth. Eastern thought emphasizes the idea that just because things are different does not mean that they are opposite, or even separate. And there is certainly no necessity for a value judgment of which is better. In fact, the most important aspect of the yin-yang symbol is that fact that it is, above all else, a circle. It is ONE, unified whole. The next most important thing is that Yin contains a small dot of the Yang color, and vis-versa. This is to show that Neither is wholly separate, because each contains some elements of the other.
Back to the color. Yin-Yangs are depicted in Black and Red, not because the Chinese consider Black and Red opposites, but because Black is the absence of color, and Red is representative of the totality of only one color.

The Yin-Yang does not represent Good and Bad. Completely to the contrary, it highlights that there is no such thing. Because to do such would indicate a value judgment between Yin and Yang. Instead of "Good and Bad", it's "Male and Female", or "Hard and Soft", or "Wet and Dry". It is "NO color" or "A color". Even on a chromatic scale, we think of black & white as opposites because one is "no color" and the other is "all colors combined". But this is STILL representing that same basic failure in Western thinking. We're STILL trying to make them opposites, and they are not meant to be. By showing that both Yin and Yang are incomplete parts of the SAME whole, you see that instead it should indicate things on different sides of the same spectrum. Emphasis on SAME. Yang is not "better" than Yin, although as a patriarchal society, the Chinese did consider "yang" virtues to be more favorable, but they still recognized that males were incomplete without our counterparts. The patriarch of the family may be the one earning income, but the woman runs the house entirely. Women made ALL the financial decisions for a family in that time. If the male wanted to spend money on something, he had to ask his wife for the money. Daosim is about more than just Balance. It is about Harmony. Harmony within oneself. Harmony with the people around us. Harmony with the world we live in.