If darkness was viewed as a type of power that one could learn to temper and use properly instead of simply the opposite of light, then Terra might not have felt so lost and rejected, and he might not have failed his mark of mastery for it. (Or he might have failed it for another reason, he can be a bit hard-headed.) If someone could have nurtured it and helped him walk an even road of Twilight, like Riku, then he would be okay. But Eraqus rejected the dark, and Terra for having it. And Terra went to the person who was telling him that it was alright. He was played like a puppet, and if you go to the start, a more accepting view of taming your darkness would have prevented that.
If there were more good fighters who trained to master the power of darkness, then there would be more people on the good guys' side who have built up a resistance to darkness, which Sora didn't have. But, perhaps because of the "tyranny of light," only evil people have the guts to tame the darkness, and thus they've made it a power all their own.
The main point is that Terra wasn't "rejected" because he
has Darkness but because he failed to control it and keep it in check.
Even Eraqus, the overzealous paragon of light is/must be supreme admits that Darkness cannot be truly destroyed.
Nurturing Darkness IS dangerous as a majority of the series has shown us so far. You simply cannot treat Darkness in the same way as you do Light because the
properties of the element are more dangerous which has nothing to do with it being "evil".
Nitroglycerin is also not "evil" yet nonetheless dangerous and needs to be kept in check even if one accepts it as a normal part of nature. The same rule goes for Darkness as an element as well.
Accepting that Darkness is there, seeing it as a necessary part of nature and being mentally steadfast enough to resist its lure is ok and wanted, people like Aqua and DiZ are examples of this.
However actively trying to harness and "master" the power of Darkness is highly dangerous and can lead to terrific results like Ansem's Apprentices with their experiments, Maleficent, Xehanort, Asshole-Riku in KH 1 or Vanitas show just like if one irresponsibly plays around with Nitroglycerin and blows up the whole neighbourhood.
The latter is also NOT proposed by the proponents of balance, neither by Yen Sid nor Mickey. The latter is only proposed by power-hungry idiots, Darkness-fanboys/-girls and schemers who want to use the Darkness to manipulate others like Xehanort.
I also wonder why people actually take Xehanort's lies and propaganda of a "tyranny of light" at face value.
There is no such thing as that as the current state of the universe in itself is a result of people using
Darkness having wrought havoc on it and all the current problems and tragedies can be traced back to
Xehanort himself upsetting the established balance by
using Darkness.
If anything might be true of the so-called "tyranny of light" it is the fact that Xehanort himself is apparently working towards bringing exactly such a tyranny into existence because he tries to repeat the calamity that gave Darkness as an element such a bad name in the first place.
Everything Xehanort does actually serves to prove to the wider populace that Darkness is, while it may not be evil itself, too dangerous to be allowed to stand equal to the Light, spreading the overzealous views of Eraqus even more.
Then there's also the issue to keep in mind that "Darkness is drawn to Light" and most often tries to disrupt, subdue or consume it, which is not really a good premise for Light and Light-aligned entities to say "Hey let's welcome Darkness as an equal force right beside us."
As Incognito already pointed out multiple times, since the original X-blade was made out of both Light and Darkness, the element Darkness itself must have had existed somehow/somewhere even in the old universe where it is said that everything was bathed in Light.
Thus, it can be deduced that Light and Darkness existed parallel in some manner, possibly on different planes of reality, but did not interfere with each other, not until the Foretellers, this ominuous prophecy and eventually the First Keyblade War came around.
In the end Riku showed darkness can be tempered and channeled properly and positively. Though this opens up a can of worms in the sense that "if darkness can be positive, then can light be negative?"
It should be noted that light and dark feed on emotion but also dont embody them. We've seen several cases of beings lacking darkness with Ventus and the Princesses expressing negative emotions such as sadness, anger and despair.
On that one though one has to ask: Did we really
ever see Darkness
actually doing something positive in the whole series? The very title of this thread is a quote of Riku himself, who clearly states in DDD that he does not really intend to "use" Darkness, but to consume it and transform it into Light which goes conform with the duality that if Light can fall and turn into Darkness (aka Light being consumed by Darkness), the other way around may also be possible.
Riku is not using Darkness
for good, he takes it on to
turn it into something good. If one really looks a little deeper into this one, it fits pretty well with the last parts of the "fairytale" of Kairi's Grandma: "Believe in the light, and the darkness will never defeat you. Your heart will shine with its power and push the darkness away." and then goes
beyond it by not pushing but
pulling/consuming.
Ansem SoD then even tauntingly spats "You can try" as if he's convinced that it is not possible, but Riku knows that it is possible because it was already done by Sora, on
himself no less.
Yep, that seems to be the case. We even have a graphic example of this in BBS with Ventus, who uses his
anger at Vanitas as a catalyst to free himself from his frozen state. You can see the light aura around Ven he used to thaw himself in the scene when he faces Vanitas just before the first round of the Final battles in Ven's story.
It's been made clear since the get-go that darkness is an inherently hazardous force, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's malevolent. That's like claiming that radiation, a natural occurrence in the universe, is an actively evil force because high levels of it can kill things. It's not unreasonable that Keyblade wielders, people tasked with keeping the worlds in order, would want to contain the darkness, but trying to destroy it completely is a foolish idea.
Riku's an unusual case. COM and DDD made that much clear. Apparently, the ability to channel both light and darkness without one overtaking the other, as well as having an immunity to the bad side effects of darkness, was practically unheard of at that point. That's not too surprising, considering that most people who fall that deep don't return without becoming a Heartless first. I doubt that anyone would ever willingly subject themselves to everything Riku had to deal with just to get a balance, and the chances of an attempt ending well are... not very high.
I think that this is what many of the Darkness-proponents and those who may want to see it on "equal footing" with Light forget. Darkness is not "evil", no, but it is nonetheless a highly dangerous element that has to be kept somehow in check.
The radiation comparison is even better than my own nitroglycerin one as it showcases the whole issue better.
The thing is, what many people also seem to overlook, that not even the highest light zealots like Eraqus try to actively destroy Darkness as even
he admits that Darkness cannot be destroyed. Eraqus' error is that he
wishes it could be destroyed and he also imparts this mindset to his students. A mindset that goes miles against reality and doesn't really help anyone to
really deal with the Darkness itself.
Xehanort however is also no help in this regard as his statements regarding the issue like "The darkness is nothing to fear." or "And yet...how frustrating that Eraqus refutes its power." are false and oversimplified as well which is no wonder since all he was doing is manipulating Terra the whole time.
Darkness IS something to fear because of its potential dangerous side effects as an element, while refuting(or rather
refusing) the
power of Darkness without actually refuting Darkness itself is the key to start dealing with it. In order to safely deal with Darkness you have to resist the lures of its possible power.
This is very true and more. One has to also keep in mind that Riku wasn't alone on this stony path he took. If Sora had not been so adamant in believing in Riku and so willing to give him a second chance despite all the crap he pulled during KH 1 (several cases of kidnapping, two cases of attempted murder and destroying a whole world are
not trivial offenses by far), Riku would probably not have been able to pull himself out of the Darkness pit. If Mickey and Naminé had then later not encouraged Riku to follow this path further and been there as moral support, he would probably still struggle with his own Darkness today like he did during the first half of Chain of Memories.
To be completely honest, no one in the series who uses darkness has been shown to simply turn evil because of it. Riku only turned against Sora because he felt Sora had betrayed him and Kairi, and he only took the vendetta so far because Maleficent and Ansem were in his ear. And Terra never actually did anything evil with his darkness consciously. He only stole Aurura's heart because he was being controlled, and he only attacked Eraqus because he thought he was going to kill Ventus.
You could probably even put Xehanort in this category. The main reason he's doing what he's doing is because he let his curiosity get the best of him - not simply because he started using the darkness in his heart. His ideals are also not that farfetched. He believes and wants light and darkness to coexist, but he's going about it the wrong way.
I could also definitely see people warming up to the darkness in the future thanks to Riku, but I'm not sure if anyone other than Sora - if even - would mind learning how to get a better grasp of it.
This is correct, although I think you got this backwards. Riku did not turn against Sora because "the Darkness did it" but because of his own will and the messed up/false assumptions he made (and because he was a jealous prick that couldn't bear the thought that Sora can have other friends beside him). Sora was searching for both him and Kairi the whole time despite being together with Donald and Goofy, something that didn't even blip on his radar.
Indeed, Terra is in sofar an interesting case in that most of his problems came from the mindset imparted on him by Eraqus' teachings. Eraqus himself
wishes that Darkness could be destroyed despite
knowing the impossibility of it and he let this fall through to his students, putting them into a considerable dilemma which is also seen when Aqua has her conversation with the Fairy Godmother.
As for Xehanort, the initial spark may have been indeed his own insatiable curiosity as this curiosity is truly immense as it is shown throughout the series that even in his crazy plans he's nearly always willing to take some chances and make "experiments" just to see what happens. The entirety of the plan in BBS except the issue with Terra's body was practically a giant experiment by Xehanort going by the motto: "Let's see if I can take a shortcut. If it works, great, mission accomplished, if not, meh who cares, moving on to plan B, C or D."
Just how much pain and suffering all this will cause isn't a concern to Xehanort in the slightest since as Sora so rightly perceived in DDD: Hearts, and thus other existences, are nothing but bottles on a shelf to be used in Xehanort's eyes.
This has nothing to do with the element Darkness, but with Xehanort's own personality and traits.
On that I'm actually pretty ambivalent, Riku is but one rare exception and depending on what goes down over the entire course of KH III and how the finale plays out, it can also happen that Darkness gets even more reviled than before with even more people turning towards a mindset like Eraqus, possibly in the worst case bringing about the very "tyranny of light" that Xehanort falsely attributes to be present in the current universe.
Going on this hypothetical scenario for a little...
Imagine Riku needing to go into hiding (possibly together with Terra?) because a big bunch of the forces of light go hysterical about the catastrophe of the Keyblade War almost repeating and start persecuting anyone displaying the slightest positive attitude towards Darkness as a "precautionary measure" to prevent another "Xehanort" from spawning.
Imagine Ansem's former apprentices, despite possibly being willing to work and make amends for the shit they pulled being rounded up and executed for
aiding in the path towards universal destruction, with Isa being among them and Lea getting a full view of the whole thing.
Or a scene where i.e. Sora and Ventus finally somehow manage to get some sense into Vanitas and start to see that he
maybe doesn't have to be evil to the core only to have Eraqus and/or Aqua stabbing him in the back under the notion "better safe than sorry".
Sadly, "Balance" has been a Broken Aesop so far:
Congratulations on finally accepting Darkness! Now you can enjoy being vulnerable to demonic entities, sociopathic sorcerers, fates worse than death, etc. on a near-regular basis! Much better than all that narrow-minded peace and prosperity you were limited to under the tyranny of Light, eh?
The Aesop is mostly "broken" because the actions of the one who is advocating it the most, Xehanort, actually show the exact opposite to the wider audience and a great deal of the main characters.
When Mickey or Yen Sid advocate "balance", they are not talking about putting Light and Darkness on equal pedestals beside each other, but to accept Darkness as a part of the natural order
without actively seeking to control/use its powers.
It is just like with BlackOsprey's radiation example. radiation is bad/unhealthy, but still a natural part of the universe and not "evil" by itself, it is the same for the Darkness.
But if more people capitalized on the power of darkness, it wouldn't be a power that just the villains hold, and they could theoretically build up some sort of resistance to it.
"
Capitalizing on the power of Darkness" is however what ultimatively
creates most of these "villains" in the first place.
Not even Riku and DiZ "capitalize" on this power, on the contrary they see this power as what it is and do NOT fall for its lure.
Everyone should accept that darkness is a thing but they shouldn't make a practice of trying to harness it. It feeds on their negativity warping itself and the person more often than not. Riku is an unheard of example for a reason.
I doubt any denizen of light can harness darkness without risk or great trial nor that they should. It'd repeat a keyblade war type situation if it got out of hand.
I think they accept it for the most part but like mentioned in KH2 are still wary. Mickey refers to it as "scary". I wonder if it's because of them being from a realm of light....could they be wary of it by instinct?
Exactly this summarizes it probably the best.
Accepting the Darkness as what it is, yes, as you can only resist something you acknowledge as being truly there but trying to capitalize on it, nope, as that is what creates most of the "villains" in the first place.
This is also a possible reason, furthermore if the consider that in the old universe, the plane of existence that is "The realm of Light" today was originally the connected world which is said to have been only light. The X-blade having an element of Darkness in it suggests that the Darkness as an element also existed back then, but was situated elsewhere and didn't interfere with the "Light World".
It was the
use of Darkness by people what eventually nearly completely destroyed the "old world" and just like in the real world people fear atomic bombs and their radiation for what destruction they can bring (despite neither the bomb nor the radiation itself being "evil"), the survivors of the original Keyblade war whose descendants live in the Realm of Light of today developed an instinctive wariness, mistrust or fear of the element Darkness as well.
