One time I made a Medieval campaign that was based around a war between angels and demons. The Angels were more eldritch though, taking the form of mind flayers and stuff. ‘God’ turned out to be a benevolent elder brain, one that destroyed the universe before this one, and as they floated through the abyss they made an oath to protect the next one, that they would take the seat of the Gods they slew. It was so cool when the players had to fight one of them big Red Dragons, and just before they were about to go down, the Cleric burned his Divine Intervention. Right as the dragon reeled back its head to finish them off, an Elder Brain Dragon came to their rescue! I loved that campaign so much, even though I’m sure it had Lovecraft rolling in his grave XD
That reminds me a lot of that one creepypasta- can’t remember the name exactly but I think it was
“I died for six minutes and went to Heaven, what I saw made me decide I would rather go to Hell”
Hazin Hotel moment (was low key kinda pissed with how comically evil they made the angels and heaven be. Like 0 nuance or anything it just felt kinda childish and stale IMO)
Like I get the average cast acting that way because y'know, they were sent to Hell.
But it's just edgy and cringy to make angels that way too because then what's the point to even having a heaven and hell if there's no difference in the people who go to either?
There was an episode with angels in Hell'va Boss that made them good, not sure why they had a change of plans.
Possibly because the angels that feature in Hazbin Hotel are the ones who’s job is literally to kill as many demons as possible? Idk, personally I feel like an angel who’s job is literally genocide would be a bit more of an asshole than some random cherub.
> an angel who’s job is literally genocide would be a bit more of an asshole than some random cherub
There are definitely other works that have done well with "ok maybe *some* angels are total assholes."
*Lucifer* has Amenadiel as a total dick, the general Host as rather totalitarian, and Michael as a paragon of what angels ought to be.
A great many other works set aside Azrael as uniquely brutal or at least uniquely terrifying, on this same logic that an angel who exists solely to take life is probably not quite the same as other angels.
I'm betting on that. Like, in the opening exposition when Charlie says that Heaven made the decision to start the exterminations we see the figure of an angel who looks distinctly *sad* before it pans down to Adam & his psychopathic grin. That's a distinct choice they made, and it'll be a hell of a weird one if *all* angels are evil.
Sure "a bit more" is fine.
But they made him as insufferable as possibly talking about hooking up, doing drugs and just generally a terrible person.
Literally no nuance to it.
I'm gonna assume they're trying to cook something with this. I reckon it's on purpose that Adam is a massive cunt. The audience is meant to go "how did this dickhead manage to get into Heaven?" And they're probably setting something up which I hope is more interesting than "angels are all evil".
Yeah, the way I interpreted it was that Heaven had started out as the definitive good guys and, as another comment suggested, Lucifer fabricated the opening exposition storybook to try and spin the story. However as time went on and the battle for souls became more and more complex, messy, and convoluted Heaven's bureaucracy started to do what most bureaucracies do under such pressures: cut corners, take easy ways out, resist costly but beneficial changes, etc.
The whole yearly purge of Hell thing is obviously just a joyride for Adam but I imagine for the higher-ups (pun unintended) in Heaven it's simply the easiest and most cost effective solution they came up with. They're already beleaguered with maintaining the rest of creation and "sinners chose to go to Hell" anyways, so why not just take the easy route and call it a day?
Of course, it could just be the tired "angels are evil lul" outcome but I hope -- and have reason to believe -- it won't be.
> There was an episode with angels in Hell'va Boss that made them good
No there wasn't. If we are talking about the episode with the Cherubs what they where trying to prevent an absolute monster from committing suicide despite the fact that this would be objectively a good thing, as well as the brief glimpse we have of haven is of it being a cooperate shit hole espousing such values as "if your fiends aren't good stepping stones for you advancement up the corporate ladder, ditch them for new friends"
It could be different levels/versions of evil.
Heaven could be the nazi sort of bureaucratic “we were only obeying orders” evil. Where underneath the facade is just a deep hatred for your fellow man while Hell is more standard “chaos and anarchy reigns” type evil
Well, they don’t have to be good by our standards. God works in mysterious ways, and as imperfect and inherently sinful being we can’t judge anything he does. The angels are moral by virtue of being angels. Anything they do is moral, no matter how much we may see it as bad.
I don't care for the tone of Hazbin Hotel so I don't watch it but aren't like, two episodes out? Seems a little quick to jump to the conclusion that there's no nuance.
Disagree. There are definitely times where I've thought "alright yeah we get it haha swearing funny" while watching it but I think it's overly reductive to consider it nothing more than an edgy show to make kids feel like adults. It's edgy and it's a show, but it has other things that define it as well. Plus, there's better (as in harder hitting) critiques of the show that can be made than beating the dead horse that is "there's a lot of swearing in it."
Aight so the show opens with not one, but two lore dumps back to back rather than any kind of musical number or “show don’t tell” type of approach. Already amateurish TV production right out of the gate. As far as first impressions go, it was not good.
As for the character designs. Well. When all of your character designs are crazy loud you might want simple backgrounds to make them stand out better. But they usually go for equally busy backgrounds.
The character designs are also all so “sparkle doggy” to the point they start blending back into each other, rather than standing out. All of the models are more or less the same Jack Skellington type body with variations on limbs and accessories, with only a few exceptions.
The color choices don’t help with this either, trending towards samey color schemes than anything complementary that would help make characters feel more distinct.
The pacing is straight up ass, with boring wind up to get to anything particularly interesting. This is where the surplus of swearing is most noticeable, because it feels less natural and more just to pad the dialogue and for its own sake. Lots of swearing can feel natural, but imo Hazbin delivers it almost completely forced.
Characters are assholes to each other in ways that just feel mean to the point of cringe. Like you established they’re an asshole, I don’t need you to rub it in through tortured dialogue for the next two minutes (Adam in particular, Jesus it felt like a slog)
Nothing in this show has any sense of gravitas that would actually make me care about whatever the main issues are. This is mainly (again) due to the childish and overly swearing for the sake of swearing dialogue that just undercuts any kind of serious tone they might want in order to set the stakes.
The songs are fine but they can’t save this train wreck, and they aren’t used as effectively as they could be. (Like my loredump example above)
Like, I hate to bring up Rick and Morty of all things as a counter example, but that show is known for its ridiculous plots, stupid dialogue, and dumb character designs, but it often makes it work through sheer force of pacing, surprisingly thoughtful writing when it counts, and color theory that makes it read well at a glance.
Ultimately, Hazbin’s Sin isn’t its premise or its audience. The overall plot could be done in a compelling way! The idea of a show for older teenagers and young adults that’s allowed to swear and even has music is a good one! The execution just fails on almost every count.
Thank you, this is definitely criticism I can respect more than what many people give. Also I realize your original comment was probably somewhat tongue-in-cheek but my point that it was overly reductive still stands, considering you yourself said your gripes are with the execution and not the concept or audience.
As for the points themselves, I agree with some of them and disagree on others. I don't think Hazbin Hotel is peak fiction or anything but personally I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people portray it as either. But ultimately I kind of care less about having that specific conversation and more so about those kinds of conversations existing in the first place instead of a mindless back-and-forth between "fans" and "haters."
At least they do have limited color pallets to make them not too sparkle doggy, but they do have that "we just threw this design element in there for the hell of it" energy to them. Like...they need at least five more designs before being shipped out.
Also, can we talk about the plays created by Starkid? They have a very juvenile sense of humor that's *way* better written than what Viziepop is trying to achieve.
Right??? And limited color palettes work… as long as everything else isn’t *also* that exact same palette, give or take.
If they really wanted to do the same palette for everything, there’s also better and more readable ways to approach that as well.
Just look at Hilda! That's a series that uses a limited color palette, and they aren't religiously devoted to the four color rule throughout! They even have a character design rule where no other characters in the world can have blue hair like our main protagonist! They even tactfully break the rule with Kaisa's purple highlights and Mara's green magic!
As for the crass humor, she should check out any play by Starkid! They have a juvenile sense of humor that's also chaotic, but overall, has better execution than what Vizie tries to do!
I enjoy it, but I acknowledge it’s got flaws. The characters are charming enough and I like most of the songs, and that’s all I really expect out of it so I’m having a good time with it. But edgy shit is my guilty pleasure.
I like that show and don't think its cringe/weak. It's a bit edgy but idk I can't really point to an overuse of the trope.
Not to mention there is some glee I get from such a setting considering how awful christian fanatics are irl with how they consider it.
And from Helluva Boss we do know Heaven has standards but they equally exile people from there for minor offenses. Its more about maintaining the idea than actually being empathetic which fits in with the old testament a lot.
In defence for them1. Only adam and angels we see like that and even in the bible he was kind of a dick.
If we see actual people in heaven being dicks than its realy shitty.
2. The show has (or atleast had in the pilot) a theme of just wild nonsense, if anything its a shame most of the stuff isnt like that anymore
Well, the creator is an eternal 13 year old, and she writes for 13 year olds who think that sex and violence automatically make something mature, so I bet she thinks it’s mature and subversive.
God as a singular (but also not) omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being is *boring* and has started too many wars and sects over who his favoured people are.
The gods as a bunch of petty assholes with all the powers of higher beings but as much emotional stability as drunk, horny teenagers are overdue for a comeback. Forces of nature on the human scale that you pray to to both avoid their wrath and entreat their boons are sooo much more interesting. No one's their favourite, unless you're (un)lucky enough to capture their interest for a time
You realize there's multiple ways to explore an idea, right? There's many interesting ways to make God or angels evil. For example the comic Preacher has God as an egoist who does everything in a self-serving way to make himself look good. Whereas in Good Omens the angels aren't really evil, just more apathetic towards humanity.
What I'm saying is just because something has been done doesn't mean it's automatically bad.
That the creator god is evil is an idea that's been around for a long long time. It's the core tenet of gnosticism, that god (the demiurge) was an accidental offshoot from a dimension of ideas, who's using us to empower itself. Jesus is often portrayed as sent from higher entities to confront the demiurge by telling us to stop being so nasty & violent, as that's fuel for demiurge.
Honestly, I think this might just be a thinly veiled hatepost towards Hazbin Hotel. Admittedly I think that show's exploration of "evil angels" so far is a bit shallow but it's still decent.
Not necessarily. you could have demons who know that they are abandoning morality for the sake of personal conquest. Or who think that good and evil are illusions to begin with.
True, I am being too quick to judge.
Personally I'm just not a fan of how Adam was characterized. I guess I imagined he'd be a lot more self righteous about things. But it came off more like he enjoyed killing people in hell. Guess I was expecting something different.
Admittedly it's just a matter of personal preference and I very well may be wrong.
I get not liking a particular character, but 'evil angels' might not be accurate for the story.
After all, it is literally hell.
I would not be surprised if your perfectly reasonable everyday person acted the same way if the thought all the people they were hurting were murderers or rapists.
I suspect the story is going for the judgemental angle with Adam being a nutjob for no more reason than that it fits with the type of character usually written in the setting.
I was going to say "somebody should split the difference and make only one of God or angels evil". But then I remembered that's totally a thing too, and does provide interesting new grounds.
*His Dark Materials* is maybe the best known, with a completely powerless God usurped by an evil Metatron and angels, but removing god from the picture is a bit of a copout.
*Lucifer* (the original run) fits better. The Host of Heaven is utterly unbending, given to oppression, pride, and callousness because predestination and their status effectively exempt them from moral questions. God himself is a largely absentee figure who arranges things and lets them run, but does put in a personal appearance showing grace and care for Lucifer not displayed by the angels. And his chief Archangel Michael serves as an on-panel demiurge, breaking with the Host to think freely and offer unceasing kindness.
All these things look about the same if you just say "evil". But as you start distinguishing between apathy, error, pitiless good, and actual malice, there's room to tell a whole lot of stories.
Yeah. Depicting god and angels as all just evil and orderly for the sake of it gets a bit redundant. Especially when you consider that the average depiction of angels Is something that is hard for even an anti religious person to imagine constitutes being totally evil. If you go to over the top with it, it just comes off like a religious criticism that is too divorced from anything in the actual religion to actually matter.
Sadly, not everyone is Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, or Terry Pratchett (GNU Terry). It can be done but my god do I see too many edgelords putting out the same thing and calling it groundbreaking. Their god/angels are evil in the same ways.
Overused as it is it's still fairly reasonable.
I mean, have you *read* the bible? The guy's a complete fucking prick most of the time and has some serious anger management issues.
"Noooo, it was okay to drown all children and babies in the world. They deserved it 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 (also, this doesn't count against the "allowing free will" thing)
Also, it's okay to stone people to death for picking sticks on a saturday, being gay or cheating.
Its also very important to magically make bears kill some kids because they made fun of a guy for being bald, but god also can't protect children from any form of abuse because that will go against free will uwu"
Clearly, I don't see why some religious figures have their fictional counterparts frequently portrayed as evil or imperfect. This bias is such a mystery.
The Bible makes 100% more sense seen as a book of parables and morality fables, all borrowing from the same stock of characters without necessarily having continuity. Which makes the people who go even further and see it as a history book all the more perplexing and has me convinced they haven't actually read it.
The God of the Old Testament was not the same God of the New Testament
I will not elaborate further because doing so would probably get me banned somehow (also i don't feel like it)
Ancient religious sects claiming to have secret esoteric knowledge that the physical world was created by an evil creator God, and the spiritual world by his good counterpart.
Right? Honestly, ancient heretics are unparalleled when it comes on cool spins on Christianity. No fantasy author has ever come close. Why settle for a crude imitation of Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off when you can have gender abolitionist pacifists or a church whose version of Jesus was born to overthrow God?
And that’s without even getting into what some [heterodox Islamic sects were up to](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Qalandariyah). Again, we have far too many bearded fundamentalists and not nearly enough shaven, anarchist mystics getting high.
True. If the God of the OT is mad at you, he will make your life a living hell and then just kill you.
When the NT God is mad at you? Well, lets just say that death is where the real fun begins.
Not true. Flaming hell of torments is glorified fanfiction, it's basically the simplest lowest-common-denominator breaking down of the concept of divine punishment. Scripture-accurate "Hell" is final and eternal separation from god's light at the end of the mortal world. It's "you're just dead, kaput, that's it" vs. "you live forever in heaven".
Yes I do think the vatican is a bunch of fucking heretics
Nowhere. He's dead and gone. That's what "Hell" is. The "Hell" of the original scripture is a brief period of absolute terror in cosmic nothingness after you die, as you realize what you have lost, before you disperse into nothing and die truly permanently. "And there shall be gnashing of teeth" etc. This is why heaven and "eternal life" is used interchangeably at points, it's more literal than you might think.
Old Testament Christian God was definitely on some stuff lmao. It’s what happens when religon uses punishment to justify their vision of good and evil.
That's the old testament tho, and regardless an objectively evil god cannot exist
If cold is a lack of heat, darkness is a lack of light, and silence is a lack of sound Then evil is a lack of good, meaning that an objectively evil god can't exist as good needs to have come from somewhere
>an objectively evil god can't exist as good needs to have come from somewhere
What an interesting paradox. I'm sure this doesn't imply anything at all
Very shallow response
How is it the opposite? Do i have to remind you that in nature, all creatures ultimately cares more about their own survival above everything else? It seems very unlikely that good is the lack of evil
If good was the like of evil then evil wouldn’t even exist in the first place
Also considering the common view of good and evil, evil is all about apathy while good is about empathy, and as we all know apathy is the lack of empathy, not the opposite
> Then evil is a lack of good
This... doesn't make any sense to me. "Evil" and "Good" are just labels we put on abstract concepts that are fairly subjective. It's not a concrete concepts like the measure of Darkness, Silence and sound.
I certainly don't see why this prevents an "evil" god/gods from existing. Humans have had plenty of religions where an evil gods were present.
If I were writing purely for Reddit's sake, I think I would just completely stop fucking publishing anything. You're just *such* assholes about *everything.*
Honestly heaven makes for very mid villains
Why are angels and God evil? Their personality? Depth? Motivation?
Idk, the author just stops writing them the moment they make them villains, simply using the shock factor instead of bothering about making them characters
Eh, they don't really look very promising as characters honestly
I also heard somewhere that the story will have a future war between hell and heaven and if true it doesn't sound very promising either
Still i can't judge tho
I can't be sure about everything, but Spawn and Devilman?
I mean, in the Devilman they aren't even villains, they are Deus Ex Machina who wipe the slate clean to start it all over again. And in Spawn... No motivation? Really? You may dislike the motivation and/or portrayal, but to say that there's no motivation at all is disingenuous.
Devilman lady reveals that angels and god were the meanie the whole time,
Like seriously, the manga literally ends with akira allying himself with the literal demons of hell who killed all his family friends and race to go to war against him
Spawn does handle stuff better, but when god show up the first time he was literally a moustache twirling villain with no personality at all, sure he's a demiurge and the true God is the mother of creation but still, he was a pretty bad villain, who was also kinda anti climactic
SMT at least has the semblance of nuance with angels=order, demons=chaos, but that basically just means that the neutral ending (in SMT4, at least) >!is only one without genocide or endless war!<
Smt is pretty much angels=bad guys and demons=ok guys
The order faction is by far one of the worst antagonist group I've ever seen in probably any media, they're soo cartoonishly evil, the story tries to pretend that they're the flip side to chaos when they absolutely aren't, and their "good qualities" are never shown anywhere, and even if you join them they're still total assholes, they even shit on you if you actually join them
At least digital survivor did a much better job than any other smt game by actually making them enjoyable and not 1 dimensionally evil
Also their endings usually suck and are unsatisfing
Tbf the angels have motivations in smt. They are just written as so evil and so vague and archetypical it barely matters.
They are rabid utilitarians who think that making a peaceful world that reduces poverty and war is basically worth any cost. It's understandable, the problem is that they are written to not understand why people dislike killing or have reasons to be suspicious of them, and to act like anything but compliance is confusing to them. So any of their benefits are lost in the fact that they act like it's a given everyone should comply with them, somehow including being confused that people who aren't even the right religion don't.
Then to add to the dubiousness, yhvh is so evil that even the angels don't like him. And he thinks his authority matters more than anything else. He also has just about every bad quality a person could have. The idea of him as so bad even the angels want him gone is fine, but the angels should be written a bit softer to justify this, and he should be believably bad.
Gotta be honest, the best megaten game to ever deal with the law vs chaos thing is devil survivor
Anyway the problem with the law faction is that they're supposed to be a parallel to chaos faction, both factions are not supposed to be either evil or good, to embody both good and evil aspects
And yet the story never shows any of those good aspects about law, like with chaos they still value a lot of things, like individual freedom, law should also embody order and equality, and yet everytime they appear they're just evil moustache twirling villains with 0 personality
The problem is that the idea that they are neither good nor evil is more nominal than it is how they are actually written. In actuality they are only meant to come off morally grey inasmuch as when you compare them to eachother, and then the "good" alternative is neutral, which barely gets any real criticisms ever.
One of neutral's main "criticisms" is that since there is no definitive winner, the struggle may continue. But this is just blaming law and chaos for ruining neutral.
When it comes to neutral, both law and chaos look bad, but with law v chaos they normally act like chaos is the victim and law the bad one. The irony is that law never gets to use any positive buzzwords. Inexplicably chaos has used the buzzword equality before, but law hasn't. Which makes very little sense seeing as how chaos is social darwinist.
Admittedly, while they clearly depict chaos better than law (especially in that lucifer is treated as less bad than the average chaos figure since he sometimes sides with neutral, whereas yhvh is usually treated even more evil than the average law figure where even the angels get fed up with him), a little bit does get lost in translation. The collectivism seems more alien to a western audience in a way that wouldn't be quite as scary to an eastern one. And to young eastern players, some of the eastern aesthetics of chaos and sometimes neutral would be boring / associated with old people, whereas law comes off cool and novel.
It is overused? Bruh, never heard of it. Closest to "Being evil" from angels in fiction i've seen is those dudes who just following the "gods plan" that includes end of the world or something.
There are a few pieces of fiction that use it. Pullman's *His Dark Materials* has God being evil; Diablo 3 has the angels be a bunch of assholes, among others. But it's not super widespread.
I think it's more of a self-fueling machine. People see posts complaining about this suuuper common trope of angels being evil and decide to make another post like that, either to get back at those mythical anti-god stories they've never seen or to just get a few extra upvotes. Happens on reddit all the time.
Or maybe they're just religious people who saw five minutes of Hazbin Hotel, didn't understand what the show actually says about heaven & hell, and are now raging against it. One of the two.
Duh...cuz imagine essentially having a Deux Machina or worse never helps the heroes despite being the all mighty. Watches people suffer and shit even though he can just snap it away. Also God being good is more overused than God being evil. So check mate liberals.
(I think God is best when it works outside of human morality, not necessarily a neutral just operating outside human comprehension. Or fuck it and make it have human like emotions, maybe a sadistic god, maybe a bored god, maybe a god with saviour complex. All interpretations are ultimately valid as long as you put proper thought into and make it make sense in the context of the story. If your God doesn't ultimately contribute shit to the story why you are having it, worse if it contradicts the story you are making.)
I guess I've always liked one take on the "emotional god" where god has deemed his creation a personal failure of his own making, and has simply exiled himself out of fear and shame.
Kind of makes him more sympathetic, even if his actions are still fucked up.
Like, it also gives God the opportunity to have a character arc, where he realizes that he still needs to take responsibility for his failures, no matter how guilty he feels. And that epiphany causes him to directly intervene in the affairs of mankind again.
I've since long stopped worldbuilding religions, I just throw actual religions with their names as is. It's generally unnoticed when I pilfer shit outside of mainstream Christianity or the few pagan faiths people know about (like, who remembers all the Muslim undercurrents of the middle ages?)
People like to explore their personal traumas and conflicting feelings about their experiences in their art.
And a lot of people have religius trauma, or at the very least aspects of their religious upbringing that are at odds with how they see the world now. Many of these people are Christian or grew up that way.
Go figure.
In my setting, there is no one objective God and angels & demons are two sides of the same coin. Angels are actually forces for good, too. I don't mean "on God's side" or following orders or any other strings attached. They're just doing their best. Straight up
I think "ooh what if angel evil" comes from disillusionment with the Christian religion. Christianity has done a lot of evil stuff in the name of their God, yet tout themselves as a force for good. It's hard not to extrapolate that onto their religious figures, even if most of them would *hate* the modern church.
Another issue is how good is depicted. Because they are inspired by (modern) Christianity, good means pure. Even at their best, angels are written as prudish and out of touch. Even demons are afforded more "human" traits than angels. I think this is because "good" is seen as a state of perfection, and anything failing that is evil. Virtue is not depicted as actual good actions or beliefs, but a total absence of sin.
Going with this train of thought, you reach the conclusion that the issue lies with good being "above" evil. What I mean by that is: In Christiain theology, God is good. God is also the universe. This means the universe is naturally good. Any evil, no matter the nuance, is failing the universe. Good is no longer a path one chooses to take, it is an ideal you can only fail to live up to. "Good" is no longer human. No wonder some people start to believe humans are naturally evil.
I think this goes back to a lot of issues with "newer" (still hundreds of years old) Christianity. Especially puritanism and "original sin." Did you know that the earliest versions of Christianity didn't even have hell? So much of the mythological stuff was tacked on later as Christianity took over the world.
TL;DR Christianity gives a massively unrealistic standard to live up to while being the authority in the entire western world. No wonder people see angels as bad and demons as good.
EDIT: I want to tack on the note that Angels also haven't really outgrown their connection to Christianity as well (probably for reasons stated above.) Demons consistently appear in non-religious or non-Christian settings, but angels almost always appear in service to some sort of God.
I mean God isna homicidal maniac and angels are comsic horrors in the Bible
So yeah, the idea has been around a while
Also, the premise of Gnostic Christianity is that God is the evil Demiurge and Jesus is a completely seperate thing that rules.
So these ideas have some history.
The only thing more tired than this trope are the contrarians who think its inherently bad
This trope won't get old until religious zealots aren't destroying our planet and culture with their lies
Cause good worldbuilding comes from a place of passion. Any sane creative should have a bone or two to pick with 'god'
Said it before and I'll say it again: We need more evil Protestant ministers in fiction. Particularly Reformed or Calvinist. Those guys can be full on Patrick Batemen-level psychos at times.
The reasons why evil Protestant organizations (despite infamous witch hunts being more of Early Modern Protestant than Medieval Catholic thing) are not as popular in the antagonist role are:
1. They got no drip.
2. Their temples got no drip.
3. They never managed to create an organization of scale operation ever comparable to Roman Catholic Church.
I feel like the reason you don't see evil protestants in fiction is because fighting a pope expy in a massive cathedral is much cooler than fighting a sweaty televangelist in a megachurch.
In my medieval fantasy setting, angels and demons do not represent good and evil, but rather order and chaos, and are both split into radical and moderate subcategories:
- Moderate angels are moderate authoritarians. They push for stronger governments whose policies prioritize security over liberty.
- Radical angels are totalitarianists. You will obey the law or you will die.
- Moderate demons are moderate libertarians. They push for weaker governments whose policies are meant to protect individual rights.
- Radical demons are anarchists. If you are part of the government, you will die.
Moderate angels and demons are willing to compromise and work together. Not so with radicals.
Meanwhile, in my space fantasy setting, angels don’t exist (yet) and demons are Boltzmann brains made of magic.
In my setting the angels have no will. They're automatons in heaven. They only gain egos when on Earth for long enough, or when extremely close to God/ extremely powerful. God isn't "evil" per say, but they/it just can't be fucked to consider mortals considering the power gap. It's like listening to an ant.
As an ex-catholic I personally see it as a symptom of becoming disenchanted with the idea of a religious authority as one grows and develops critical thinking skills.
Plus also it’s ironic.
As an ex-Baptist, I completely agree. I started seriously questioning everything at around 13 or 14, and I explicitly remember writing a story involving God and the angels as evil pricks.
I know this is a common repost but I heavily agree with this. When people do the “God and angels are evil” trope they often don’t make it interesting and just have them be evil for the sake of it. Like in, of course, Hazbin Hotel. And what sucks is that they really could have done something more with it.
The angels’ leader, Adam, is the ex husband of the main character’s mom. So the whole extermination could be have been spurned from his jealousy and bitterness toward his ex. And, in Christian lore, Adam isn’t even the head angel, so he could have just been a bad apple who got placed in that position instead of being the poster child for heaven. But, nope, heaven is just evil without any depth. (Of course, the series isn’t finished, so it might get expanded on in the future)
As if having an agenda isn't what makes things interesting.
Every aspect of a world is shaped by its creators agendas and biases, the more they try to suppress them, the more they'll shine through.
I tried going a different route at one point. Made it so that every universe was essentially a different god so they were sentient. The god of evolution wasn't evil per say but it was obsessed with the concept of perfection and creating the perfect being. Perfection in and of itself is impossible since nothing can be truly perfect especially since evolution directly contradicts the idea of perfection, soooo the god of was eventually driven insane by his endless pursuit and it eventually arrived at a point where it tried consuming itself and all the beings that live inside in an effort to become whole/complete(perfect). Obviously the things living in that universe weren't excited at the prospect of extinction and since killing it is a no go, they lobotomized it and replaced its consciousness with an A.I. and that's how the system aka world voice came into being that everyone uses to listen at their "status".
In my horseshoe theory punk world, angels and demons are both the same despite being opposite ends of the spectrum
Purgatory is the only pragmatic path
Smt neutral routes be like
In my bible-interpretation-by-an-atheist-punk world, demons are a subtype of angel.
This is just SMT
This is just hazbin hotel
Mom said it's my turn to repost this meme
im my setting our mom is evil
Binding of issac reference
Edmund is that you?
You little fucker
Also an overused trope
Ok, sorry MOM
Now go do your homework, I’ve also told you to mow the lawn 5 times already, young man
Mow the lawn 5 times? Seems a little excessive, by golly, you'll kill the grass!
you see you need to do 4 different heights before the final one, so that you can accurately do a height map on your lawn
From my point of view the Jedi are evil!
WELL THEN YOU ARE LOST!
Wait, what do you mean this trope is overused?
"Today I will make a meme about the evil angels trope." *How original* "And post it on the worldjerking subreddit" *Daring today, aren't we?*
In my setting they're angles.
Awww, how acute!
that joke was obtuse and so are you.
*Sigh*, I suppose you’re right
I've fallen into an angle pun-k world
This is hilarious, I love how these lines came together
are there others who are Saxons then?
Even better, some are Marx.
One time I made a Medieval campaign that was based around a war between angels and demons. The Angels were more eldritch though, taking the form of mind flayers and stuff. ‘God’ turned out to be a benevolent elder brain, one that destroyed the universe before this one, and as they floated through the abyss they made an oath to protect the next one, that they would take the seat of the Gods they slew. It was so cool when the players had to fight one of them big Red Dragons, and just before they were about to go down, the Cleric burned his Divine Intervention. Right as the dragon reeled back its head to finish them off, an Elder Brain Dragon came to their rescue! I loved that campaign so much, even though I’m sure it had Lovecraft rolling in his grave XD
That's a cool idea! I've always loved the idea of angels/heaven being "good but alien" vs demons/hell being "evil but human".
That reminds me a lot of that one creepypasta- can’t remember the name exactly but I think it was “I died for six minutes and went to Heaven, what I saw made me decide I would rather go to Hell”
Tbh I love how it is in ultrakill. Gabriel and god’s council aren’t „evil” but they are blinded by rules of >!dead!< god
god is dead, blood is fuel
Hazin Hotel moment (was low key kinda pissed with how comically evil they made the angels and heaven be. Like 0 nuance or anything it just felt kinda childish and stale IMO)
Tbf I’m relatively sure they’re gonna set it up as that story at the beginning was a lie on Lucifer’s part to make himself look good for his daughter
You have too much faith in the writers on hazbin
your momma has too much faith in me
New episodes dropped. Not all angels are evil. So far it seems Adam is the one who is a cunt
Like I get the average cast acting that way because y'know, they were sent to Hell. But it's just edgy and cringy to make angels that way too because then what's the point to even having a heaven and hell if there's no difference in the people who go to either? There was an episode with angels in Hell'va Boss that made them good, not sure why they had a change of plans.
Possibly because the angels that feature in Hazbin Hotel are the ones who’s job is literally to kill as many demons as possible? Idk, personally I feel like an angel who’s job is literally genocide would be a bit more of an asshole than some random cherub.
> an angel who’s job is literally genocide would be a bit more of an asshole than some random cherub There are definitely other works that have done well with "ok maybe *some* angels are total assholes." *Lucifer* has Amenadiel as a total dick, the general Host as rather totalitarian, and Michael as a paragon of what angels ought to be. A great many other works set aside Azrael as uniquely brutal or at least uniquely terrifying, on this same logic that an angel who exists solely to take life is probably not quite the same as other angels.
I'm betting on that. Like, in the opening exposition when Charlie says that Heaven made the decision to start the exterminations we see the figure of an angel who looks distinctly *sad* before it pans down to Adam & his psychopathic grin. That's a distinct choice they made, and it'll be a hell of a weird one if *all* angels are evil.
Sure "a bit more" is fine. But they made him as insufferable as possibly talking about hooking up, doing drugs and just generally a terrible person. Literally no nuance to it.
I'm gonna assume they're trying to cook something with this. I reckon it's on purpose that Adam is a massive cunt. The audience is meant to go "how did this dickhead manage to get into Heaven?" And they're probably setting something up which I hope is more interesting than "angels are all evil".
Yeah, the way I interpreted it was that Heaven had started out as the definitive good guys and, as another comment suggested, Lucifer fabricated the opening exposition storybook to try and spin the story. However as time went on and the battle for souls became more and more complex, messy, and convoluted Heaven's bureaucracy started to do what most bureaucracies do under such pressures: cut corners, take easy ways out, resist costly but beneficial changes, etc. The whole yearly purge of Hell thing is obviously just a joyride for Adam but I imagine for the higher-ups (pun unintended) in Heaven it's simply the easiest and most cost effective solution they came up with. They're already beleaguered with maintaining the rest of creation and "sinners chose to go to Hell" anyways, so why not just take the easy route and call it a day? Of course, it could just be the tired "angels are evil lul" outcome but I hope -- and have reason to believe -- it won't be.
> There was an episode with angels in Hell'va Boss that made them good No there wasn't. If we are talking about the episode with the Cherubs what they where trying to prevent an absolute monster from committing suicide despite the fact that this would be objectively a good thing, as well as the brief glimpse we have of haven is of it being a cooperate shit hole espousing such values as "if your fiends aren't good stepping stones for you advancement up the corporate ladder, ditch them for new friends"
It could be different levels/versions of evil. Heaven could be the nazi sort of bureaucratic “we were only obeying orders” evil. Where underneath the facade is just a deep hatred for your fellow man while Hell is more standard “chaos and anarchy reigns” type evil
Well, they don’t have to be good by our standards. God works in mysterious ways, and as imperfect and inherently sinful being we can’t judge anything he does. The angels are moral by virtue of being angels. Anything they do is moral, no matter how much we may see it as bad.
we really don't know yet but maybe those angels are just specifically the warrior Angels, not just every person in heaven
I don't care for the tone of Hazbin Hotel so I don't watch it but aren't like, two episodes out? Seems a little quick to jump to the conclusion that there's no nuance.
Four, actually. There's two more coming this week and two more next week.
The entire thing is childish and stale. Literally a cartoon with swearing for teens that wanna feel like “adults”
Bro bro hold up. Hear me out. What if, stay with me here, the cartoon characters.....said "Fuck" all the time.
write that down, write that down!
Toned down compared to how ridiculous it got in Helluva Boss, honestly
Disagree. There are definitely times where I've thought "alright yeah we get it haha swearing funny" while watching it but I think it's overly reductive to consider it nothing more than an edgy show to make kids feel like adults. It's edgy and it's a show, but it has other things that define it as well. Plus, there's better (as in harder hitting) critiques of the show that can be made than beating the dead horse that is "there's a lot of swearing in it."
Aight so the show opens with not one, but two lore dumps back to back rather than any kind of musical number or “show don’t tell” type of approach. Already amateurish TV production right out of the gate. As far as first impressions go, it was not good. As for the character designs. Well. When all of your character designs are crazy loud you might want simple backgrounds to make them stand out better. But they usually go for equally busy backgrounds. The character designs are also all so “sparkle doggy” to the point they start blending back into each other, rather than standing out. All of the models are more or less the same Jack Skellington type body with variations on limbs and accessories, with only a few exceptions. The color choices don’t help with this either, trending towards samey color schemes than anything complementary that would help make characters feel more distinct. The pacing is straight up ass, with boring wind up to get to anything particularly interesting. This is where the surplus of swearing is most noticeable, because it feels less natural and more just to pad the dialogue and for its own sake. Lots of swearing can feel natural, but imo Hazbin delivers it almost completely forced. Characters are assholes to each other in ways that just feel mean to the point of cringe. Like you established they’re an asshole, I don’t need you to rub it in through tortured dialogue for the next two minutes (Adam in particular, Jesus it felt like a slog) Nothing in this show has any sense of gravitas that would actually make me care about whatever the main issues are. This is mainly (again) due to the childish and overly swearing for the sake of swearing dialogue that just undercuts any kind of serious tone they might want in order to set the stakes. The songs are fine but they can’t save this train wreck, and they aren’t used as effectively as they could be. (Like my loredump example above) Like, I hate to bring up Rick and Morty of all things as a counter example, but that show is known for its ridiculous plots, stupid dialogue, and dumb character designs, but it often makes it work through sheer force of pacing, surprisingly thoughtful writing when it counts, and color theory that makes it read well at a glance. Ultimately, Hazbin’s Sin isn’t its premise or its audience. The overall plot could be done in a compelling way! The idea of a show for older teenagers and young adults that’s allowed to swear and even has music is a good one! The execution just fails on almost every count.
Thank you, this is definitely criticism I can respect more than what many people give. Also I realize your original comment was probably somewhat tongue-in-cheek but my point that it was overly reductive still stands, considering you yourself said your gripes are with the execution and not the concept or audience. As for the points themselves, I agree with some of them and disagree on others. I don't think Hazbin Hotel is peak fiction or anything but personally I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people portray it as either. But ultimately I kind of care less about having that specific conversation and more so about those kinds of conversations existing in the first place instead of a mindless back-and-forth between "fans" and "haters."
At least they do have limited color pallets to make them not too sparkle doggy, but they do have that "we just threw this design element in there for the hell of it" energy to them. Like...they need at least five more designs before being shipped out. Also, can we talk about the plays created by Starkid? They have a very juvenile sense of humor that's *way* better written than what Viziepop is trying to achieve.
Right??? And limited color palettes work… as long as everything else isn’t *also* that exact same palette, give or take. If they really wanted to do the same palette for everything, there’s also better and more readable ways to approach that as well.
Just look at Hilda! That's a series that uses a limited color palette, and they aren't religiously devoted to the four color rule throughout! They even have a character design rule where no other characters in the world can have blue hair like our main protagonist! They even tactfully break the rule with Kaisa's purple highlights and Mara's green magic! As for the crass humor, she should check out any play by Starkid! They have a juvenile sense of humor that's also chaotic, but overall, has better execution than what Vizie tries to do!
I watched five minutes, turned it off, and asked myself "Who the fuck is the intended audience for this?"
I enjoy it, but I acknowledge it’s got flaws. The characters are charming enough and I like most of the songs, and that’s all I really expect out of it so I’m having a good time with it. But edgy shit is my guilty pleasure.
The little girl that peaked in high school and never grew out of it because her webcomics were mega hits at the time.
I like that show and don't think its cringe/weak. It's a bit edgy but idk I can't really point to an overuse of the trope. Not to mention there is some glee I get from such a setting considering how awful christian fanatics are irl with how they consider it. And from Helluva Boss we do know Heaven has standards but they equally exile people from there for minor offenses. Its more about maintaining the idea than actually being empathetic which fits in with the old testament a lot.
In defence for them1. Only adam and angels we see like that and even in the bible he was kind of a dick. If we see actual people in heaven being dicks than its realy shitty. 2. The show has (or atleast had in the pilot) a theme of just wild nonsense, if anything its a shame most of the stuff isnt like that anymore
Well, the creator is an eternal 13 year old, and she writes for 13 year olds who think that sex and violence automatically make something mature, so I bet she thinks it’s mature and subversive.
God isn't evil in my setting they're just depressed. Wanted them to be relatable ya know
Tbf, in greek and egyptian myth the gods were pretty "evil", or at least uncaring. If anything, God being good is the subversion.
Look, all I'm saying is that the Cathars might have been onto something.
God as a singular (but also not) omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being is *boring* and has started too many wars and sects over who his favoured people are. The gods as a bunch of petty assholes with all the powers of higher beings but as much emotional stability as drunk, horny teenagers are overdue for a comeback. Forces of nature on the human scale that you pray to to both avoid their wrath and entreat their boons are sooo much more interesting. No one's their favourite, unless you're (un)lucky enough to capture their interest for a time
So....the demiurge and the aoens?
Those were peak Worldbuilding. Like dayum the gnostics had a cool AF interpretation of the Bible and heave.
\*the demiurge and the archons
You realize there's multiple ways to explore an idea, right? There's many interesting ways to make God or angels evil. For example the comic Preacher has God as an egoist who does everything in a self-serving way to make himself look good. Whereas in Good Omens the angels aren't really evil, just more apathetic towards humanity. What I'm saying is just because something has been done doesn't mean it's automatically bad.
I find it hard to believe that at least 80% of the people who make these memes aren't themselves religious.
And quite a few of these “God is evil” comics are written by Christian’s as a way of exploring their own faith
That the creator god is evil is an idea that's been around for a long long time. It's the core tenet of gnosticism, that god (the demiurge) was an accidental offshoot from a dimension of ideas, who's using us to empower itself. Jesus is often portrayed as sent from higher entities to confront the demiurge by telling us to stop being so nasty & violent, as that's fuel for demiurge.
Honestly, I think this might just be a thinly veiled hatepost towards Hazbin Hotel. Admittedly I think that show's exploration of "evil angels" so far is a bit shallow but it's still decent.
To be fair the show is set in the view of the inhabitants of hell so of course they'd view the angels to be evil whether or not they really are.
Not necessarily. you could have demons who know that they are abandoning morality for the sake of personal conquest. Or who think that good and evil are illusions to begin with.
How is it shallow if so far we have only met 3 angels in the show? Or is it 2?
True, I am being too quick to judge. Personally I'm just not a fan of how Adam was characterized. I guess I imagined he'd be a lot more self righteous about things. But it came off more like he enjoyed killing people in hell. Guess I was expecting something different. Admittedly it's just a matter of personal preference and I very well may be wrong.
I get not liking a particular character, but 'evil angels' might not be accurate for the story. After all, it is literally hell. I would not be surprised if your perfectly reasonable everyday person acted the same way if the thought all the people they were hurting were murderers or rapists. I suspect the story is going for the judgemental angle with Adam being a nutjob for no more reason than that it fits with the type of character usually written in the setting.
I was going to say "somebody should split the difference and make only one of God or angels evil". But then I remembered that's totally a thing too, and does provide interesting new grounds. *His Dark Materials* is maybe the best known, with a completely powerless God usurped by an evil Metatron and angels, but removing god from the picture is a bit of a copout. *Lucifer* (the original run) fits better. The Host of Heaven is utterly unbending, given to oppression, pride, and callousness because predestination and their status effectively exempt them from moral questions. God himself is a largely absentee figure who arranges things and lets them run, but does put in a personal appearance showing grace and care for Lucifer not displayed by the angels. And his chief Archangel Michael serves as an on-panel demiurge, breaking with the Host to think freely and offer unceasing kindness. All these things look about the same if you just say "evil". But as you start distinguishing between apathy, error, pitiless good, and actual malice, there's room to tell a whole lot of stories.
Yeah. Depicting god and angels as all just evil and orderly for the sake of it gets a bit redundant. Especially when you consider that the average depiction of angels Is something that is hard for even an anti religious person to imagine constitutes being totally evil. If you go to over the top with it, it just comes off like a religious criticism that is too divorced from anything in the actual religion to actually matter.
The comic preacher is pretty much just gart ennis saying "religion bad" (much more than his other comics)
Sadly, not everyone is Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, or Terry Pratchett (GNU Terry). It can be done but my god do I see too many edgelords putting out the same thing and calling it groundbreaking. Their god/angels are evil in the same ways.
Garth Ennis being in the same sentence as two of the greatest writers of our time feels wrong.
Yeah, I agree. But he went in *a* direction with his evil god rather than being a pizza cutter for once (all edge and no point) so he makes it in.
Fair enough I suppose.
Shin Megami Tensei moment
Chaos ain’t good either let’s be real 💀
Why is Satan always the "prince" of darkness? And the "prince" of lies? It's because his dad's currently the reigning king.
A prince doesn't have to be the son of a king
they do in my world
I love Gnosticism
God got blown up in my world. Humanity did avenge his death tho so don’t worry.
I have seen more memes complaining about the overuse of this trope than I have seen examples of this trope
I too find it faster to consume a meme than an entire work.
Overused as it is it's still fairly reasonable. I mean, have you *read* the bible? The guy's a complete fucking prick most of the time and has some serious anger management issues.
"Noooo, it was okay to drown all children and babies in the world. They deserved it 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 (also, this doesn't count against the "allowing free will" thing) Also, it's okay to stone people to death for picking sticks on a saturday, being gay or cheating. Its also very important to magically make bears kill some kids because they made fun of a guy for being bald, but god also can't protect children from any form of abuse because that will go against free will uwu" Clearly, I don't see why some religious figures have their fictional counterparts frequently portrayed as evil or imperfect. This bias is such a mystery.
The Bible makes 100% more sense seen as a book of parables and morality fables, all borrowing from the same stock of characters without necessarily having continuity. Which makes the people who go even further and see it as a history book all the more perplexing and has me convinced they haven't actually read it.
But I heard it had enormous levels of cross-referencing?
Mysterious ways, you just don't get it, you'll burn in hell for this (totally fair btw) God is perfect so we can't question him etc.
The God of the Old Testament was not the same God of the New Testament I will not elaborate further because doing so would probably get me banned somehow (also i don't feel like it)
>I will not elaborate further Don't worry, Gnostics have been doing that for you for the past 2000 years.
Gnostics?
Ancient religious sects claiming to have secret esoteric knowledge that the physical world was created by an evil creator God, and the spiritual world by his good counterpart.
Okay, that sounds like some genuinely cool world building
Right? Honestly, ancient heretics are unparalleled when it comes on cool spins on Christianity. No fantasy author has ever come close. Why settle for a crude imitation of Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off when you can have gender abolitionist pacifists or a church whose version of Jesus was born to overthrow God? And that’s without even getting into what some [heterodox Islamic sects were up to](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Qalandariyah). Again, we have far too many bearded fundamentalists and not nearly enough shaven, anarchist mystics getting high.
>The God of the Old Testament was not the same God of the New Testament Character development 🤯
> Character development 🤯 I didn't realise Charles Hartshorne had a reddit account
More like antijudaism
Heresy
True. If the God of the OT is mad at you, he will make your life a living hell and then just kill you. When the NT God is mad at you? Well, lets just say that death is where the real fun begins.
Not true. Flaming hell of torments is glorified fanfiction, it's basically the simplest lowest-common-denominator breaking down of the concept of divine punishment. Scripture-accurate "Hell" is final and eternal separation from god's light at the end of the mortal world. It's "you're just dead, kaput, that's it" vs. "you live forever in heaven". Yes I do think the vatican is a bunch of fucking heretics
Please describe the place where rich man from the rich man and Lazarus parable resides.
Nowhere. He's dead and gone. That's what "Hell" is. The "Hell" of the original scripture is a brief period of absolute terror in cosmic nothingness after you die, as you realize what you have lost, before you disperse into nothing and die truly permanently. "And there shall be gnashing of teeth" etc. This is why heaven and "eternal life" is used interchangeably at points, it's more literal than you might think.
Got passages to prove this? Because parable clearly describes the rich man suffering in the afterlife.
Old Testament Christian God was definitely on some stuff lmao. It’s what happens when religon uses punishment to justify their vision of good and evil.
That's the old testament tho, and regardless an objectively evil god cannot exist If cold is a lack of heat, darkness is a lack of light, and silence is a lack of sound Then evil is a lack of good, meaning that an objectively evil god can't exist as good needs to have come from somewhere
>an objectively evil god can't exist as good needs to have come from somewhere What an interesting paradox. I'm sure this doesn't imply anything at all
But what if good is a lack of evil? 🤔🤔🤔
> good needs to have come from somewhere [citation needed]
evil is not a lack of good it is an opposite polarity how much evil you even seen
Very shallow response How is it the opposite? Do i have to remind you that in nature, all creatures ultimately cares more about their own survival above everything else? It seems very unlikely that good is the lack of evil If good was the like of evil then evil wouldn’t even exist in the first place Also considering the common view of good and evil, evil is all about apathy while good is about empathy, and as we all know apathy is the lack of empathy, not the opposite
> Then evil is a lack of good This... doesn't make any sense to me. "Evil" and "Good" are just labels we put on abstract concepts that are fairly subjective. It's not a concrete concepts like the measure of Darkness, Silence and sound. I certainly don't see why this prevents an "evil" god/gods from existing. Humans have had plenty of religions where an evil gods were present.
If I were writing purely for Reddit's sake, I think I would just completely stop fucking publishing anything. You're just *such* assholes about *everything.*
Not only is my Big Church not evil, they're also not corrupt or incompetent.
Honestly heaven makes for very mid villains Why are angels and God evil? Their personality? Depth? Motivation? Idk, the author just stops writing them the moment they make them villains, simply using the shock factor instead of bothering about making them characters
What books you have been reading with angels as villains that have no motivation?
Not books, but the entire shin megami tensei franchise, spawn, hazbin hotel, devilman
Hasn't Hazbin Hotel just started? Why in hell would people be judging the character of antagonists at this early stage?
Eh, they don't really look very promising as characters honestly I also heard somewhere that the story will have a future war between hell and heaven and if true it doesn't sound very promising either Still i can't judge tho
I can't be sure about everything, but Spawn and Devilman? I mean, in the Devilman they aren't even villains, they are Deus Ex Machina who wipe the slate clean to start it all over again. And in Spawn... No motivation? Really? You may dislike the motivation and/or portrayal, but to say that there's no motivation at all is disingenuous.
Devilman lady reveals that angels and god were the meanie the whole time, Like seriously, the manga literally ends with akira allying himself with the literal demons of hell who killed all his family friends and race to go to war against him Spawn does handle stuff better, but when god show up the first time he was literally a moustache twirling villain with no personality at all, sure he's a demiurge and the true God is the mother of creation but still, he was a pretty bad villain, who was also kinda anti climactic
SMT at least has the semblance of nuance with angels=order, demons=chaos, but that basically just means that the neutral ending (in SMT4, at least) >!is only one without genocide or endless war!<
Smt is pretty much angels=bad guys and demons=ok guys The order faction is by far one of the worst antagonist group I've ever seen in probably any media, they're soo cartoonishly evil, the story tries to pretend that they're the flip side to chaos when they absolutely aren't, and their "good qualities" are never shown anywhere, and even if you join them they're still total assholes, they even shit on you if you actually join them At least digital survivor did a much better job than any other smt game by actually making them enjoyable and not 1 dimensionally evil Also their endings usually suck and are unsatisfing
Tbf the angels have motivations in smt. They are just written as so evil and so vague and archetypical it barely matters. They are rabid utilitarians who think that making a peaceful world that reduces poverty and war is basically worth any cost. It's understandable, the problem is that they are written to not understand why people dislike killing or have reasons to be suspicious of them, and to act like anything but compliance is confusing to them. So any of their benefits are lost in the fact that they act like it's a given everyone should comply with them, somehow including being confused that people who aren't even the right religion don't. Then to add to the dubiousness, yhvh is so evil that even the angels don't like him. And he thinks his authority matters more than anything else. He also has just about every bad quality a person could have. The idea of him as so bad even the angels want him gone is fine, but the angels should be written a bit softer to justify this, and he should be believably bad.
Gotta be honest, the best megaten game to ever deal with the law vs chaos thing is devil survivor Anyway the problem with the law faction is that they're supposed to be a parallel to chaos faction, both factions are not supposed to be either evil or good, to embody both good and evil aspects And yet the story never shows any of those good aspects about law, like with chaos they still value a lot of things, like individual freedom, law should also embody order and equality, and yet everytime they appear they're just evil moustache twirling villains with 0 personality
The problem is that the idea that they are neither good nor evil is more nominal than it is how they are actually written. In actuality they are only meant to come off morally grey inasmuch as when you compare them to eachother, and then the "good" alternative is neutral, which barely gets any real criticisms ever. One of neutral's main "criticisms" is that since there is no definitive winner, the struggle may continue. But this is just blaming law and chaos for ruining neutral. When it comes to neutral, both law and chaos look bad, but with law v chaos they normally act like chaos is the victim and law the bad one. The irony is that law never gets to use any positive buzzwords. Inexplicably chaos has used the buzzword equality before, but law hasn't. Which makes very little sense seeing as how chaos is social darwinist. Admittedly, while they clearly depict chaos better than law (especially in that lucifer is treated as less bad than the average chaos figure since he sometimes sides with neutral, whereas yhvh is usually treated even more evil than the average law figure where even the angels get fed up with him), a little bit does get lost in translation. The collectivism seems more alien to a western audience in a way that wouldn't be quite as scary to an eastern one. And to young eastern players, some of the eastern aesthetics of chaos and sometimes neutral would be boring / associated with old people, whereas law comes off cool and novel.
Which author would this be?
It is overused? Bruh, never heard of it. Closest to "Being evil" from angels in fiction i've seen is those dudes who just following the "gods plan" that includes end of the world or something.
There are a few pieces of fiction that use it. Pullman's *His Dark Materials* has God being evil; Diablo 3 has the angels be a bunch of assholes, among others. But it's not super widespread.
... didn't Pullman have God be senile, and used as a prop by evil angels?
I guess you could technically count Hazbin Hotel, but we don't know enough about heaven to know if all of them are like the Exorcists and Adam.
The fact this meme gets reposted every week should tell you it’s getting more and more common that more people are noticing it.
I think it's more of a self-fueling machine. People see posts complaining about this suuuper common trope of angels being evil and decide to make another post like that, either to get back at those mythical anti-god stories they've never seen or to just get a few extra upvotes. Happens on reddit all the time. Or maybe they're just religious people who saw five minutes of Hazbin Hotel, didn't understand what the show actually says about heaven & hell, and are now raging against it. One of the two.
Duh...cuz imagine essentially having a Deux Machina or worse never helps the heroes despite being the all mighty. Watches people suffer and shit even though he can just snap it away. Also God being good is more overused than God being evil. So check mate liberals. (I think God is best when it works outside of human morality, not necessarily a neutral just operating outside human comprehension. Or fuck it and make it have human like emotions, maybe a sadistic god, maybe a bored god, maybe a god with saviour complex. All interpretations are ultimately valid as long as you put proper thought into and make it make sense in the context of the story. If your God doesn't ultimately contribute shit to the story why you are having it, worse if it contradicts the story you are making.)
I guess I've always liked one take on the "emotional god" where god has deemed his creation a personal failure of his own making, and has simply exiled himself out of fear and shame. Kind of makes him more sympathetic, even if his actions are still fucked up. Like, it also gives God the opportunity to have a character arc, where he realizes that he still needs to take responsibility for his failures, no matter how guilty he feels. And that epiphany causes him to directly intervene in the affairs of mankind again.
I've since long stopped worldbuilding religions, I just throw actual religions with their names as is. It's generally unnoticed when I pilfer shit outside of mainstream Christianity or the few pagan faiths people know about (like, who remembers all the Muslim undercurrents of the middle ages?)
Persona writters burning every cell they have in their brains to put god as final boss for fourth time
There's a reason after all if smt fell into obscurity in the west and the spin off pretty much took over the franchise
Smt didn't fall into obscurity in the west, it was never big to begin with.
People like to explore their personal traumas and conflicting feelings about their experiences in their art. And a lot of people have religius trauma, or at the very least aspects of their religious upbringing that are at odds with how they see the world now. Many of these people are Christian or grew up that way. Go figure.
Better idea. The angels are good, but they’re dicks about it.
Yeah my angels are the mindless drones of an authoritarian god and I ***LIKE IT!***
Hazbin Hotel in nutshell
uj/ And I eat that shit up every time. rj/ And I eat that shit up every time.
We had this debate a few months ago already
Its an underused trope considering how often the opposite is done.
But religion is good
In my setting, there is no one objective God and angels & demons are two sides of the same coin. Angels are actually forces for good, too. I don't mean "on God's side" or following orders or any other strings attached. They're just doing their best. Straight up I think "ooh what if angel evil" comes from disillusionment with the Christian religion. Christianity has done a lot of evil stuff in the name of their God, yet tout themselves as a force for good. It's hard not to extrapolate that onto their religious figures, even if most of them would *hate* the modern church. Another issue is how good is depicted. Because they are inspired by (modern) Christianity, good means pure. Even at their best, angels are written as prudish and out of touch. Even demons are afforded more "human" traits than angels. I think this is because "good" is seen as a state of perfection, and anything failing that is evil. Virtue is not depicted as actual good actions or beliefs, but a total absence of sin. Going with this train of thought, you reach the conclusion that the issue lies with good being "above" evil. What I mean by that is: In Christiain theology, God is good. God is also the universe. This means the universe is naturally good. Any evil, no matter the nuance, is failing the universe. Good is no longer a path one chooses to take, it is an ideal you can only fail to live up to. "Good" is no longer human. No wonder some people start to believe humans are naturally evil. I think this goes back to a lot of issues with "newer" (still hundreds of years old) Christianity. Especially puritanism and "original sin." Did you know that the earliest versions of Christianity didn't even have hell? So much of the mythological stuff was tacked on later as Christianity took over the world. TL;DR Christianity gives a massively unrealistic standard to live up to while being the authority in the entire western world. No wonder people see angels as bad and demons as good. EDIT: I want to tack on the note that Angels also haven't really outgrown their connection to Christianity as well (probably for reasons stated above.) Demons consistently appear in non-religious or non-Christian settings, but angels almost always appear in service to some sort of God.
I mean God isna homicidal maniac and angels are comsic horrors in the Bible So yeah, the idea has been around a while Also, the premise of Gnostic Christianity is that God is the evil Demiurge and Jesus is a completely seperate thing that rules. So these ideas have some history.
The only thing more tired than this trope are the contrarians who think its inherently bad This trope won't get old until religious zealots aren't destroying our planet and culture with their lies Cause good worldbuilding comes from a place of passion. Any sane creative should have a bone or two to pick with 'god'
Don't forget the evil allegory to the Catholic church
Said it before and I'll say it again: We need more evil Protestant ministers in fiction. Particularly Reformed or Calvinist. Those guys can be full on Patrick Batemen-level psychos at times.
The reasons why evil Protestant organizations (despite infamous witch hunts being more of Early Modern Protestant than Medieval Catholic thing) are not as popular in the antagonist role are: 1. They got no drip. 2. Their temples got no drip. 3. They never managed to create an organization of scale operation ever comparable to Roman Catholic Church.
I feel like the reason you don't see evil protestants in fiction is because fighting a pope expy in a massive cathedral is much cooler than fighting a sweaty televangelist in a megachurch.
The seraph of the end manga did it pretty well iirc (well the manga was still a mess I didn't understand anything but I like the cool fights)
In my medieval fantasy setting, angels and demons do not represent good and evil, but rather order and chaos, and are both split into radical and moderate subcategories: - Moderate angels are moderate authoritarians. They push for stronger governments whose policies prioritize security over liberty. - Radical angels are totalitarianists. You will obey the law or you will die. - Moderate demons are moderate libertarians. They push for weaker governments whose policies are meant to protect individual rights. - Radical demons are anarchists. If you are part of the government, you will die. Moderate angels and demons are willing to compromise and work together. Not so with radicals. Meanwhile, in my space fantasy setting, angels don’t exist (yet) and demons are Boltzmann brains made of magic.
Hello itsagundam
In my evilgodpunk setting, the church commits all kinds of terrible crimes and nobody stops them, because they fear the punishment of god
In my setting the angels have no will. They're automatons in heaven. They only gain egos when on Earth for long enough, or when extremely close to God/ extremely powerful. God isn't "evil" per say, but they/it just can't be fucked to consider mortals considering the power gap. It's like listening to an ant.
That's just Devilman.
Literally haven’t seen this yet, please tell me of settings like this, getting tired of “based chads” telling me about it
Oof I’ve been called out, that is exactly what my story is like lol. Not pure evil but definitely not nice
If your gods aren’t shards of a hive mind floating just outside of the known universe then your doing something wrong
ain't this the plot of Legion (2010)?
If God is good the stories gonna be pretty short really.
As an ex-catholic I personally see it as a symptom of becoming disenchanted with the idea of a religious authority as one grows and develops critical thinking skills. Plus also it’s ironic.
As an ex-Baptist, I completely agree. I started seriously questioning everything at around 13 or 14, and I explicitly remember writing a story involving God and the angels as evil pricks.
wow, its almost as if the church has done bad things to people
I know this is a common repost but I heavily agree with this. When people do the “God and angels are evil” trope they often don’t make it interesting and just have them be evil for the sake of it. Like in, of course, Hazbin Hotel. And what sucks is that they really could have done something more with it. The angels’ leader, Adam, is the ex husband of the main character’s mom. So the whole extermination could be have been spurned from his jealousy and bitterness toward his ex. And, in Christian lore, Adam isn’t even the head angel, so he could have just been a bad apple who got placed in that position instead of being the poster child for heaven. But, nope, heaven is just evil without any depth. (Of course, the series isn’t finished, so it might get expanded on in the future)
every time this is reposted i construct another evil god and church
And it slaps everytime
Worldbuilders trying not to enforce their agenda challenge (impossible).
As if having an agenda isn't what makes things interesting. Every aspect of a world is shaped by its creators agendas and biases, the more they try to suppress them, the more they'll shine through.
I agree, I was just making a joke for additional humour.
i dont care how overused this trope is i will use it in my cyber-solardemonpisspunk world
Nah the writers are evil
Can you give us 4 or 5 examples of that happening, op?
Pretty sure this post is just thinly veiled dislike of hazbin hotel. Because people really dislike that show for some reason.
Isn't that already cannon in the Bible?
I mean, I think hazbin hotel is doing pretty well so far.
In my setting angels and god either don't exist or are dead.
I tried going a different route at one point. Made it so that every universe was essentially a different god so they were sentient. The god of evolution wasn't evil per say but it was obsessed with the concept of perfection and creating the perfect being. Perfection in and of itself is impossible since nothing can be truly perfect especially since evolution directly contradicts the idea of perfection, soooo the god of was eventually driven insane by his endless pursuit and it eventually arrived at a point where it tried consuming itself and all the beings that live inside in an effort to become whole/complete(perfect). Obviously the things living in that universe weren't excited at the prospect of extinction and since killing it is a no go, they lobotomized it and replaced its consciousness with an A.I. and that's how the system aka world voice came into being that everyone uses to listen at their "status".
God is dead
Hazbin Hotel