Poll of the Day > Why are demons always bad?

(+) Yeah! (+)

We need a show/series where Demons are actually the good guys, sent to hell to suffer, so they understand humanities suffering and actually want to fight to prevent them from getting sent to hell as well.

Could even have the real bad guys be the Angels/God, and the Demons and Humanity rise up and fight against the Godly injustice.

Lot of room for interesting characters, and could even have a few Angels who where not totally arsehats.

I mean, Supernatural kinda touched on it, with some demons not being scum etc, but it would be kinda cool to flip the script and make a pro-demon tv series.
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HellBoy?

but basically your question is, "why are incarnations of evil always evil?" gee I dunno...
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because thats literally what it means to be a demon

where did u go to school chump
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Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.
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FatalAccident posted...

because thats literally what it means to be a demon

where did u go to school chump

Ummm...no? Only in Christian cultures are demons explicitly evil. Even then it's mostly a modern day thing as even early Christian groups recognized demons as fulfilling many roles and having varied personalities.

Where did you go to school chump?
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Well, most of us lives in a modern time Christian world, so...
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I have demons but I don't think they're evil
they are just there to scare me or test me
they aren't malevolent it's just that is their job to keep me on my toes and wake me up at the right time
tell you something is wrong with your stomach

scare you back to life when you're dying...
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They aren't always bad, but if you only watch garbage it will seem like that.
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honestly though, humans can't be demons they are very selfish and jealous, not very cunning either
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Sam Winchester?
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Spawn

Highschool DxD
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Because they're evil? And some continuities expand on that idea. In Supernatural, for instance, all demons started off as humans who were seduced into doing wicked things and later generations were tortured until they agreed to become the torturers. More generally, it's been explained because they don't have a soul and, within those continuities, the soul is responsible for morality.
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RoboXgp89 posted...

honestly though, humans can't be demons they are very selfish and jealous, not very cunning either

So basically, it's like the perfect scenario for demonic control systems that bind humanity to be set in place, without anyone even knowing or caring o:
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I get the general perceived evilness of demons, just.....they don't have to be that way.

It's played out a bit like that in Lucifer for instance (mostly mis-understood etc), and to some degree Supernatural etc, but yeah, you really don't have any series that portrays demons as being supportive of humanity.

Even using the whole Christianity concept, you could argue that demons and humans are in the same boat, both being considered not worthy of heaven, with humans only being allowed into heaven because of JC (not through there own actions etc). It would make sense in such a case for humanity and Hellspawn to team up and look out for each other.

I'd like to see a book/tv series etc, that kinda explores that concept, and a true revolution of hell and earth against heaven, where sentient beings rise up and demand rights, equality and freedom on a heavenly scale. They demand the right to choose if they exist, and where they exist, and they hopefully find a way to finally win such things by the end.

Portraying God as not being good and all powerful, and everything he does is just would be seriously controversial, but heck, they have already done that at this point a few times. Why not just go all the way?
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TC worships the devil confirmed.
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Nasada19 posted...

TC worships the devil confirmed.

"Arv The Great Is Great Fan Club" is really just a Luciferian cult, CONFIRMED.
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wolfy42 posted...

It's played out a bit like that in Lucifer for instance (mostly mis-understood etc), and to some degree Supernatural etc, but yeah, you really don't have any series that portrays demons as being supportive of humanity.

Lucifer isn't a demon, he's an archangel. In theory, he's supposed to be lawful good, but he's chaotic evil

wolfy42 posted...

Even using the whole Christianity concept, you could argue that demons and humans are in the same boat, both being considered not worthy of heaven, with humans only being allowed into heaven because of JC (not through there own actions etc). It would make sense in such a case for humanity and Hellspawn to team up and look out for each other.

Except no, you can't. Within the mainstream contexts of Christianity, humans were born with free will -- meaning they can choose to follow god or sin. Angels and demons were not born with free will, they can only follow their nature. It's certainly nowhere near the same boat.

wolfy42 posted...

I'd like to see a book/tv series etc, that kinda explores that concept, and a true revolution of hell and earth against heaven, where sentient beings rise up and demand rights, equality and freedom on a heavenly scale. They demand the right to choose if they exist, and where they exist, and they hopefully find a way to finally win such things by the end.

Portraying God as not being good and all powerful, and everything he does is just would be seriously controversial, but heck, they have already done that at this point a few times. Why not just go all the way?

Pretty sure that's been done already and it's just a matter of you needing to find it. Hell, even in Supernatural, god isn't all-powerful.
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demons basically torture you when ever to make you grasp that you have to move past something or some obstacle

humans just do it to be egotistical dicks
not the same evolutionary advantage
i'm supposed to be offended by someone outside of my head doing it, because it either means they're dumb or unreal
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DocDelicious posted...

FatalAccident posted...

because thats literally what it means to be a demon

where did u go to school chump

Ummm...no? Only in Christian cultures are demons explicitly evil. Even then it's mostly a modern day thing as even early Christian groups recognized demons as fulfilling many roles and having varied personalities.

Where did you go to school chump?

nice sources there chumpo
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DocDelicious posted...

Only in Christian cultures

also rofl

this guy must literally never have heard of any other cultures on this entire planet ever
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blue exorcist.
lucifer.
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I'm not a demonologist by any means, but I've researched a lot of various topics for writing/gming. There's a grimoire called the Ars Goetia that describes various demons and their rankings.

Several of the Demons it describes can be summoned for relatively benign purposes.

But you gotta take that with a grain of salt. A tome by people who want to summon demons, for people who want to summon demons probably isn't going to be as negative on them.

With that said, your conventional demons are mischievous or outright cruel. If a culture wanted to make positive folklore or stories about a Supernatural creature it wouldn't use a demon.

The only good "demon" I can think of is Sun Wukong. And even then, he was coerced into helping the priest.


Tl;dr- Demons are bad because they are classically used almost explicitly as a means for bad things to happen
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123pizza2 posted...

I'm not a demonologist by any means, but I've researched a lot of various topics for writing/gming. There's a grimoire called the Ars Goetia that describes various demons and their rankings.

Several of the Demons it describes can be summoned for relatively benign purposes.

But you gotta take that with a grain of salt. A tome by people who want to summon demons, for people who want to summon demons probably isn't going to be as negative on them.

With that said, your conventional demons are mischievous or outright cruel. If a culture wanted to make positive folklore or stories about a Supernatural creature it wouldn't use a demon.

The only good "demon" I can think of is Sun Wukong. And even then, he was coerced into helping the priest.


Tl;dr- Demons are bad because they are classically used almost explicitly as a means for bad things to happen

lol... as if they are real in the first place
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I didn't ever imply they were real though?

It's fun to discuss mythology.
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wolfy42 posted...

Why are demons always bad?

For the same reasons "unicorns" always have a single horn on their head. Because it's basically the primary defining characteristic of the thing in question.

Though in the case of demons what you're saying isn't even true, considering there are tons of stories that present demons as either being sympathetic, misunderstood, or more or less framed for being evil. Or have demons be evil, but then immediately present a counter-example (like Planescape: Torment having a succubus who's sworn a vow of chastity). If anything, modern day stories are FAR more likely to present demons as being "good" or at least protagonists than they are to play them as one-dimensional boogah-boogah monsters.

Hell, in a lot of modern stories, humans are always the real monsters.



DocDelicious posted...

Ummm...no? Only in Christian cultures are demons explicitly evil.

Also the Judaic cultures where the entire concept of demons originated, and the Islamic cultures that sprang from both.

But there's also the added problem that the word "demon" really only applies to Judaeo-Christian demons in the first place (the word was invented to describe them specifically, not as a generic term for any evil spirit or entity), so if you're talking about stuff like Hindu asuras or Japanese onis, those technically aren't demons anyway (and even if they were, most of them are explicitly evil - or at least malicious - regardless).


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Its just a harem anime/visual novel, but Shuffle! has demons that aren't evil in it. Also, in Yu Yu Haksuho, two of the main good guys are demons.
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Foppe posted...

Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.

Or, Jesus is good.. but God is evil.

A battle against a tyrannical all-creator seems a little less hopeless with the second most powerful being on your side.
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keyblader1985 posted...

Foppe posted...

Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.

Or, Jesus is good.. but God is evil.

A battle against a tyrannical all-creator seems a little less hopeless with the second most powerful being on your side.

But Jesus is God.

shadowsword87 posted...

keyblader1985 posted...

Foppe posted...

Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.

Or, Jesus is good.. but God is evil.

A battle against a tyrannical all-creator seems a little less hopeless with the second most powerful being on your side.

But Jesus is God.

You mean son of god
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shadowsword87 posted...

But Jesus is God.

Oh, hush.
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Foppe posted...

Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.

There's an anime/manga called drifters, (done by the same guy who did Hellsing) that heavily implies the big bad is Jesus
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Lol sweet.

I kinda like the idea of Jesus leading the revolution. He comes back, realizes his father is a dick, befriends some demons and a ton of humans and we all storm the gates of heaven.

God is all powerful, but split into 3 beings, so basically Jesus counters some of his power, allowing the rest of us to have some kind of chance at winning.

The entire battle actually ends up being a fight to change the mind of god basically, but you don't really know that till the end.

Could be fun, especially since you could have famous personalities from hell involved (humans from our past who died), and well known demons/angels etc.

Heck it's not beyond the possibility that Supernatural could still end up going in that direction since JC at least has not been involved (as far as I know, not caught up) yet.

I've always thought traditional Christian beliefs are pretty unfair/cruel etc, would be cool to see a story/show that agrees and tries to rectify that in some way.

Seriously, if you had a father who basically never forgave you for anything, decided you where bad and needed to be punished for eternity as soon as you where born, and was more then happy to see you suffer so you could learn lessons, that would not be a father you would probably be happy to have in your life.
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123pizza2 posted...

Foppe posted...

Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.

There's an anime/manga called drifters, (done by the same guy who did Hellsing) that heavily implies the big bad is Jesus

Glad I made this topic if only for all the cool shows/manga etc that are being mentioned:)

It's been awhile but Piers Anthony did an immortal series which kinda touched on this stuff as well I think, though not quite to the point of storming heaven and forcing rule changes.
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SatanIsGood
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Shin Megami Tensei series yet...

his dark materials(book series, book 1 was turned into a movie named "the golden compass")

demons(written as daemons) are actually personifications of people's souls, taking on an animal form reflecting the "master's" personality.
a daemon can't live without it's master and humans can't live without their daemon.

and in this book series "god" is indeed a bad guy.
angels are created by human creativity leaking out and gaining self awareness, and the first angel to awaken declared himself the creator of all(despite being accidentally created by those he considers his own creation)

the series starts out like a children's book, but becomes quite dark near the end of book 1 and it only gets darker from there.
they didn't get that far in the movie though, it ends shortly after experiments to sever humans from their daemons come to light.

Sahuagin posted...

HellBoy?

but basically your question is, "why are incarnations of evil always evil?" gee I dunno...

if vampires can be made to glitter. demons can be made to be good.
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I never could get through the golden compass (book or movie). I have tried multiple times. Sounds like it might get better, if only I could make it that far.
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Clearly the TC doesn't watch enough anime.
.
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JOExHIGASHI posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

keyblader1985 posted...

Foppe posted...

Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.

Or, Jesus is good.. but God is evil.

A battle against a tyrannical all-creator seems a little less hopeless with the second most powerful being on your side.

But Jesus is God.

You mean son of god

The Christian Trinity.
God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all the same and yet different things.
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that's more of a catholic thing. there are lots of christians that don't believe in the trinity. mostly because the bible doesn't really support it.
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If you want good demons, you generally have to find a setting that DOESN'T follow the actual mythology very well, with a premise like:

1. God, if it exists in the setting, may be of any alignment, but all other supernatural entities are treated the way a typical fantasy writer uses things like elves and dwarves. Which easily results in a setting where you have angels and demons that can be either bad or good.

2. God is evil in the setting, or just doesn't interfere at all and its the angels that are all evil. Often because they want a cold world of order without any emotion in it, where everyone is basically a robot. So naturally, those who oppose this are the good guys.
.
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Sephiroth C Ryu posted...

If you want good demons, you generally have to find a setting that DOESN'T follow the actual mythology very well, with a premise like:

1. God, if it exists in the setting, may be of any alignment, but all other supernatural entities are treated the way a typical fantasy writer uses things like elves and dwarves. Which easily results in a setting where you have angels and demons that can be either bad or good.

2. God is evil in the setting, or just doesn't interfere at all and its the angels that are all evil. Often because they want a cold world of order without any emotion in it, where everyone is basically a robot. So naturally, those who oppose this are the good guys.
.

What if god, and the angels, ended up being robots that we invented, but went back in time and created mankind, so they would be created?

Perhaps God/Angels are programs that follow pure logic, and Demons are programs that have AI that simulates emotions, which is why they were cast out.

Could be a fun premise.
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ssj4supervegeta posted...

that's more of a catholic thing. there are lots of christians that don't believe in the trinity. mostly because the bible doesn't really support it.

I would say that the major Christian groups accepts it while the Catholics are the only one that makes a big deal of it.
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No, it wouldn't. Time travel tends to make things bad unless a writer can do it well, and that premise is already a paradox from the get go.
.
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Xfma100 posted...

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Shin Megami Tensei series yet...

I was going to, but didn't really care to post

Angels and Demons represent dual aspects of humanity. Generosity and greed, empathy and apathy, altruism and egotism.

One aspect of Christianity is that Earth was meant to be a paradise for Humans and it's because of rebellion that it turned out differently. If you make Demons another group of helpers that were misinterpreted then you remove that rebellion. Human failing isn't a result of spiritual tempters but because creation itself is flawed and life was always meant to be arduous. You would have Angels as protectors and Demons as guides in avoiding an unfortunate fate. If both sides are working together to the same goal it makes explaining why bad thing happen to good people significantly more difficult.

Now if you want to say the roles are reversed then the side of Heaven is uncaring and the side of Hell has concern for Humans. If this is true then Demons would not have been sent to Hell for the reason described. The side of Heaven would have not cared about the fate of humans to worry about influencing them. This brings back the notion of rebellion. That there was a group which was concerned about the flaws in creation and were punished for questioning the motives of their maker. Perhaps they were also concerned about life on Earth to an extent, perhaps their concerns started in self interest and they learned empathy through suffering. Either way an uncaring Heaven wouldn't be as bad a Hell but neither outcome is in the interest of Humans.
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keyblader1985 posted...

Foppe posted...

Why is Jesus Christ always the good guy?
He would be so much cooler if he used his power for evil and fought his father.

Or, Jesus is good.. but God is evil.

A battle against a tyrannical all-creator seems a little less hopeless with the second most powerful being on your side.

Not exactly what you're describing, but here's a relatively famous book that's existed for decades where God is basically an asshole, Satan is basically the hero of the piece, and Jesus is pretty much the closest thing you have to a villain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Reign_in_Hell



slacker03150 posted...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SatanIsGood

Was thinking about posting something along those lines.



wolfy42 posted...

I never could get through the golden compass (book or movie). I have tried multiple times. Sounds like it might get better, if only I could make it that far.

I could never get into it, because it always felt like the author was trying so hard to write an "anti-Narnia" that could basically be anti-religious atheist fantasy that it makes him come across like kind of a bitter asshole, and it kind of soils it for me.

It basically leaves me going "I get it, emo teen. You don't like Christianity. You're sooooo edgy!"

And I say that as someone who isn't actually religious, and who has had no problem with other stories in the past that were arguably coming from a similar point-of-view. I feel like I could have enjoyed it more if Pullman was actually a better writer, or even remotely capable of subtlety. Metaphor and satire loses its effectiveness if the author is constantly hitting you with it like a massive hammer to the face.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

It basically leaves me going "I get it, emo teen. You don't like Christianity. You're sooooo edgy!"

it's so easy to say things like this, but you're seemingly ignorant to the fact that people have to literally escape from that kind of life. the damage to my family from hyper-religious thinking is on-going.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Metaphor and satire loses its effectiveness if the author is constantly hitting you with it like a massive hammer to the face.

I haven't seen 'the golden compass' but that describes Narnia pretty well.
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When Faustus goes to sell his soul the demon initially warns him against it.