Generally, how do you prefer demons in media to be portrayed?

Without context I have no preference.

I will say the amount of demons involved can affect something.

If theres only twelve demons and theyre all evil, thats fine. But if theres hundreds of demons, all demons being evil would become very boring assuming demons are constantly showing up.

A case where all demons are good or misunderstood would probably be too much a stretch. Even if the demons may have once had goals or ideals perceived as good, some of them should have fallen to some degree where theyre clearly evil, even if the demons themselves are unaware that theyre evil.

I dunno about literally all flat out evil constantly, but in general I think the goals and aims of demons should be incompatible with those of humans on both an individual and a species-wide level. they might make deals / partnerships but those should essentially be seen as uneasy truces

The concept of a good demon is really misunderstanding what a demon is.

It's the kind of thing that could kinda work as a metaphor for tradition or ancestry or something, if it was like, literally ONE good demon. You know, like the typical drama about the family of blue collars whose son wants to become a painter kind of deal. Wreck it Ralph doesn't want to be a bad guy anymore. Shrek learns it's better to have friends than to be mean. Etc.

But for the most part, no, demons are supposed to be bad. Like, it's a more consistent quality of the concept than for zombies or vampires. Like, they legit work for Satan. It doesn't get any more evil than that.

The 'some are good, some are bad' option is only interesting because we expect them all to be bad.

If you have a good reason to present them as other than bad, do it. But not if it's just novelty.

Basically like Disgaea's portrayal. I still need to get 7.

My preferred portrayal of demons violates this website's new "no hornyposting" rule.

In my mind the term demons refer to a type of unholy evil entity connected to some kind of hellish dimension

In my thinking it is impossible for a demon to be good (or even neutral) by definition you would not classify it as a demon, it would be something else.

HOWEVER (and this is very important), I am a BIG fan of things being misconstrued as demons when they are in fact not demons.

The heroes are sent to kill a demon but they find it is a deformed human, or peaceful monster, and now their world is shattered, because now they question what is a demon and what isn't. Maybe people have been hunting killing innocent creatures for centuries (maybe no real demons exist), and even with the discovery, there might be people who still think of these creatures as demons and want to kill them, and people think the heroes have been possessed by them etc. etc. etc.

In short, Demon ARE EVIL. But things that are not EVIL could be thought of as Demons.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Like, they legit work for Satan.

Depends on the culture or mythology.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Depends on the culture or mythology.

I've never considered "demon" to be a very good translation of "yokai", for exactly this reason.

I don't really have a strong preference, but there has been so much "demons are misunderstood and we're the real monsters" stories that a piece of media just having outright evil, irredeemable demons is really refreshing.

No real preference besides the writer doing something interesting with them.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Depends on the culture or mythology.

including fictional mythology. lots of stuff has demons without any real world mythology involved.

Evil from a human viewpoint. Not just standard evil like you'd see in something like Doom, I think they should be reprehensible. They should also be more than willing to alter their approach for their goals.

I don't care for demons being good unless it's a outlier. I don't mind not evil but tends to do things in a underhanded way. Like say making deals with humans but there is a cost that's really bad

No real preference... Like I just read through Helck (Whats released in English at least) and Demons in that are more like a different species of people just trying to get by rather than evil entities... But the humans still think they're beings of evil and to blame for their land being shitty...

But I also like when they're just pure evil... So it just depends on the context really...

You rarely ever see "all demons are evil" unless, they're all wordless mobs. I'd be interested in seeing them genuinely being a bunch of evil people.

All evil but I make exception for dmc

Some good, some evil and all that.