Basic Trope: A character with strong associations to light is a bad guy.
- Straight:
- Exaggerated:
- Solaris, the Sun Emperor, wants to exterminate everyone in order to bring peace to the universe, because only a place devoid of life can truly be peaceful.
- Seraphiel disintegrates people in bursts of holy glory for white lies and dirty thoughts.
- The local God of Evil/Satanic Archetype is made of light.
- God Is Evil but still a light-being.
- The Complete Monster of the story has a color palette of white and light blue, with a mix of bright colors like pink and yellow
- Downplayed:
- Solaris is a peace enforcer of the Sun Order. However, his brutal methods and zealousness make him a borderline Knight Templar.
- Seraphiel contains herself mostly to punishing the wicked, but sometimes a good person can still do something evil, and she'll kill them all the same.
- Solaris is a pretty sympathetic Anti-Villain for a Church Militant working with the Solar Order.
- Light Is Neutral: Sephariel is the angelic yet bureaucratic judge of the afterlife but she can tell a person's morals and sins judges the person whether or not the bad outweighs the good and vice versa.
- Heaven has both genuinely good angels and vicious angels. They had Teeth-Clenched Teamwork based on their differing approach.
- Justified:
- "You get that pure, you start seeing the rest of the world as corrupt. The problem is, he was always of a direct turn of mind, so he decided to eliminate the corrupt, rather than, say, converting them or concentrating on providing a good example."
- Seraphiel is a villain seeking good publicity, and considers light-based powers a good way to obtain this.
- Solaris and Seraphiel are trying to recreate paradise, but to do so, sin has to be exterminated.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Solaris seeks to exterminate all the "lesser races"... but he changes his mind after discovering that he's only ever dealt with the exiled criminal element of said "lesser races"...
- As someone is desperately fighting back against Seraphiel's torture, her mask is knocked off and a hideous demonic face is behind it, suggesting she was knowingly evil and trying to get people to hate the forces of good.
- One of the other members of the priesthood, Faye, finds out Solaris is being brainwashed by Malsophia. She successfully purifies him.
- Double Subverted:
- But then he changes it back, as he's already sent the troops.
- ...but Seraphiel isn't a demon; a la many descriptions in The Bible, angels are just alien and often horrifying monsters by nature. Including the good ones.
- Seraphiel is a light-based demon/fallen angel.
- Faye seems to successfully purify Solaris, but it turns out he was Not Brainwashed.
- Malsophia is the Sun God.
- Parodied:
- Gullible Lemmings insist that Solaris and Seraphiel are good even as they disintegrate them while cackling madly.
- Anyone who wears light clothing is seen as evil.
- Solaris can think of no better use for his light powers than to shine them in people's eyes when he gets bored.
- Seraphiel ignites people in blazes of holy fire for littering and being moody.
- Zig Zagged:
- A photograph of angels of light destroying an orphanage surfaces causing the heroes to turn their back on them. However the angels later revealed those children were demons in disguise. An encounter with more of them reveals that demon children are still innocent and the demonic culture is to blame but at the same time the angels involved were rogue.
- Light Magic is the magic of control and discipline, and is not associated with either good and evil. A kindly wise Old Master is likely a white magic user. So is a megalomaniac Control Freak planning to deploy a large Mind-Control Device to affect the entire world.
- Averted:
- Light Is Good.
- There is no correlation between appearance and alignment.
- There's no "good" or "evil", just shades of grey.
- Everyone is a good guy- there are no villains.
- Light and darkness do represent alignment, but they represent Order Versus Chaos rather than good versus evil.
- Enforced:
- "The producer demanded us to look for the exact opposite of our dark, but heroic protagonist, so we came up with somebody who is always in light but absolutely monstrous."
- "The producer wants to add a touch of irony and destroy the old Light Is Good stereotype. You know what to do."
- The producer demanded the writers to further emphasize their Knight Templar villain because the previous draft was deemed as inadequate, so they make them light-based.
- Lampshaded:
- "Just once I'd like to meet a priest of the God of Light and Mercy that wasn't secretly plotting the extermination of the so-called lesser races."
- "Uh, since when is light associated with evil? I thought evil entities were all dark and scary!"
- Invoked:
- Solaris dresses in bright and cheery colors, and so throws his enemies into confusion.
- Solaris, a false prophet, pretends to have received a vision from the Sun God, gathers an army of fanatics and leads them on a "holy war" for his own personal agenda.
- Malsophia, a malicious entity, makes itself look similar to the saints/angels/gods that the locals worship to manipulate them more easily.
- Exploited: A dark villain tricks people into thinking that light and light powered people are evil because of Solaris/Seraphiel and their powers.
- Defied: A person with a mean streak receives light-based superpowers and vows to try to be nicer to live up to their new abilities.
- Discussed: "You only ever see somebody using that much Light and Purity imagery when they're either trying to convert people, or, as I assume the case is here, when they're trying to convince their self and others that the wicked, terrible things they do are perfectly justified."
- Conversed: "So the guy with the sun motif was the Big Bad after all. I should have seen that one coming."
- Deconstructed:
- The association of light with evil results in a world of shadows where food is scarce due to crop die-offs and literacy and electronic media decline from use.
- Light Is Not Good, but everyone assumes it is, meaning an evil light-based being can easily become The Mole and/or a Villain with Good Publicity.
- Reconstructed:
- The world of shadows is still a better alternative than the preceding one where radiation powered megalomaniacs nearly brought humanity to extinction.
- Solaris and Seraphiel were evil for trying to destroy the balance between light and darkness. After they are defeated, balance is restored and night and day became normal.
Back to Light Is Not Good. And don't trust that guy in white carrying the gigantic, flaming sword...
