Angel or Demon?

Angel Or Demon

  • Genocidal Angel

    Votes: 11 68.8%
  • Conquering Demon

    Votes: 5 31.3%

  • Total voters
    16

georgelee5786

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Been apprehensive about my main antagonist for a while now. At first, it was a vampire, but I realized that was stupid and boring so I changed it. I've become stuck between two options.

A. Genocidal angel who was twisted during a war between the God and Devil, and now seeks to exterminate the descents of a small fraction of the Devil's army that survived.

Or

B. Greater demon who disguised himself from God's power(something that would be established as a power for Greater demons earlier) and hid when he realized God was going to win the war and has now reawakened to conquer the world.

What do y'all think?
 

Cipiteca396

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Depends on how the other thread ended up. If you want to double down on the evil religion thing, then the angel would be the correct choice since it's physical proof that religion isn't good for the people in the crossfire.

On the other hand, the demon is a great choice for creating more... ambiguous situations. Where religious people are fighting traditionalists and both are fighting the demon.

Really it's hard to say without knowing more about the story. My first instinct is to say, "Scrap em both and make a human the real antagonist, even if they're the inciting incident."
 

NotaNuffian

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... So a fucked up symbol of hope or a standard baddie?

That depends, if you want to make an anti-villain/ sympathetic figure for the audience, the angel is best.

If you just want to make a generic, bad because bad antagonist, go for the demon.

Although, the demon can have more room to play with by bringing in race war where both sides are fucked up, assuming the protag is in the angel camp (?) and that the demon is just fighting for his people. Just that his people are bad for MC and his people.
 

K5Rakitan

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I will take the one with more smut, please!
 

TheEldritchGod

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Power creep is a bitch. Sure you wanna go with the epic shit where you punch out satan, but after that, what next? Are you gonna go full Gurren Lagann an eventually have people using Galaxies as Throwing Stars?

Who's the story for? You? Then go with your bad self. If the story is to try and get a loyal following, start small. It's always easier o make the MC more powerful will time. Its hard to go the other way.

Fr example, MC in one story is an angel with magical power to do... anything. However, he can only do anything very weakly. So he can teleport like 10 feet. He can shoot bolts of flame that feel like getting hit with someone using a lighter and a can of Right Guard. Impressive blast of flame, but of little consequence.

But he can do weaknesses very well.

So, in he rushes, glowing with holy light, keeping the weak undead at bay so the rest of his team can gang up on the main undead badguy.
And the bad guy hits him with a darkness field. Completely shuts him down and while he's flailing about, mops up the rest of his team.
Now The MC is completely FUCKED and not only has to figure out how to save his own ass, but the rest of the team.

You can relate to that, I think.

Now, you want me to relate to a mutherfuckin servant of GOD who is most likely experiencing life in a way I cannot comprehend, existing in dimensions I cannot perceive, who fought in battled that spanned eons against titanic forces enough that It caused this entity to suffer PTSD, to the point where he is now GENOCIDAL.

Do... you understand that term?

This is a being that will, from your own description, laser focus on the task of utter destruction of a RACE. A creature like that would be the MONSTER I would be fighting. He'd learn a demon was hiding in a village, and nuke the village without a second thought. Hell. Unlikely to find a first one.

Some woman got raped by a demon. Had a kid. Kid's fairly normal. Angel finds out, Murders the child. WITH A COMET.

What you have described is a remorseless, inhuman murder machine bent on the completely annihilation of an entire SPECIES. Is this the MC I'm supposed to relate to? Admire? Like?

I mean, as a character study, it might be interesting to get inside the mind of such an alien thing, but can you give me that lien mind set? I'm talking Blue Orange Morality here.

As for the demon... Okay? I mean, at least he would most likely have to pretend to be human and act human in order to worm his way into world domination. But uh... why?

I mean, why rule the world? 'Cause Demon? Demons just do that shit? All Demons? Some demons? Why are there demons? I mean, you are presenting me with an apocalyptic war between God and Demons. 'Kay... I need to know the cosmology of this to even take it seriously.

I'm getting around it by explaining the physics of the matter. Angels are made up of different matter than humans. Gods don't come down and fight because they are fighting other Beings of the same type.

Imagine you are fighting someone else in a sword fight. Below you are millions of Ants. On the other side are people, like you, with millions of ants below them. Now, a million ants can ruin someone's day, but here's the thing. How do you help the ants? If you just start tossing lightning bolts, are you gonna help the right ant? If you pause and CAREFULLY help the ants, the other guy is going to take advantage of your concentration and jump you.

Also they need faith energy to safely manifest or if they force it, there is backlash. Just talking to one ant might unleash a tornado if the power isn't handled carefully.

SO, I have Gods fighting ABOVE the MC and the mortal forces can kinda get help, but if the gods focus too much attention on one part of the fight, other parts of the battle will suffer.

So, why isn't god just smiting the demons and "winning"?

You want this scale, you need to know these answers, even if you never tell the reader, because if YOU don't know, it will leak into your story. You will make mistakes, the reader will noticed, and you'll get called out for it.
 

Kidd_Wadsworth

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Altruistic evil is the doing of terrible things for a "good" cause, or the doing of terrible things in God's name. I vote for option 1 because altruistic evil is a real problem in our world. From the Crusades (killing and raping for the Pope), to the Protestant reformation (Christians killing Christians they disagreed with), to the struggles within Islam today, this is terrible problem. If your story can show how wrong this is then GO FOR IT.

OPTION 1

--Kidd
 

Gryphon

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A genocidal angel sounds like it would be more unique and have much more story and character potential then a demon conqueror.
 

BearlyAlive

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Sympathetic villains are getting kinda stale, so I'm for B.

Make your villains alien and foreign. Make them utterly incomprehensible to your protagonists.
 

georgelee5786

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:blob_hmm_two: Skarbrand?
Who?
Depends on how the other thread ended up.
I ended it ruling it was a symbol used by the first emperor to display his dominance over religion after he all but banned it. I could tie it to the First Emperor having imprisoned the Angel before he could kill the descendants of the demons.
 
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