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Actually, I think other religions have angels too. Or at least the people who translated the beings in the work I read as angels. I think it was the birth of the Buddha story I read for my literature class this last semester. I'll have to check.

Actually, man vs. God (or his servants, or the supernatural) is one of the main things that keep showing up again over and over in literature. It's just done very poorly as of late. And characterization is something every good writer does because without the inner struggle you don't have a much of a character regardless of what they are.

They're easily recognized concepts, aye, but they don't always mean the same thing from one culture to another. A kitsune or a kelpie, for example, are just mischevious spirits, and that they usually happen to kill the person upon whom they're playing their 'pranks' is simple coincidence. They're not demons, per se, in the biblical sense of the term, even though they're regarded that way.


I agree completely lol Like Veive said, they're not angels and demons if they lack the religious backdrop to make them that way. I've done plenty of research of my own, and that point is generally supported, as I mentioned above, and it's why, when I do write characters that could be considered angels or demons, I'm careful to make it understood that the term is only used as a convenient descriptor if there's no religious context to back it up.

Example: my most recent novel Technocia (which should be moving into third draft form fairly soon here). There are characters (antagonists and one 'protagonist' (for lack of a better term for her)) whose actions are very much in line with the biblical conception of what demons are (corrupting, immoral, domineering, and so on), and I've even gone so far as to play with that concept by calling them Sins (cliche when summarized like this, I know, but it fits in the story). However, because there is no religious backdrop for them, since they reside in the dream realms and there's much broader correlations (HP Lovecraft among them) for explaining what they are, I make it understood that they are not demons, even though their actions and intents cast them in that roll.

On the other extreme, my first NaNo attempt was a pseudo-historical fantasy that drew heavily on medieval Christian theology and its obsession with demons. I didn't get very far with it because of stupidity on my part (I installed Doom 3 and proceeded to aggravate my mild carpal tunnel whee ), but the angels and demons in that story would have clearly had reason for the labels because of the heavily religious context, and the three MCs were very much a part of the religion from which the angels and demons were drawn.