r/TopCharacterTropes • u/no-Pachy-BADLAD • 5h ago

Characters [Blasphemous trope] Satan is hot

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Don't watch these at Sunday School

1) While a more sympathetic example than the below, Lucifer's tirle character still retains the CW bait (yes I know it's a Fox/Netflix show) crowd as he's busy solving crimes.

2) Mystery of the Kingdom of God was a 2021 Christian kids film that would've fallen into obscurity beyond fudnamentalist audiences if it wasn't for folks picking up on the Tumblr sexyman vibes of the film's devil.

3) The CEO of Hell Lucifer (or 'Lucy') is an intimidating persona also reflecting the creator's preference for women in business suits.

4) Le génie du mal ('The Spirit of Evil', sculpture on the right) was a sculpture by Guillame Geefs in 1848, meant to replace the sculpture on the left by his brother Joseph, criticised for its distracting beauty and 'unhealthy allure'. He didn't do a good job (or did a VERY good one) taking that into account.

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301

u/CareRarely 5h ago

Uh... Satan being attractive is lore accurate.

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u/AltairLSAM 5h ago

Only after Paradise Lost was published.

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u/Beautiful-Cup4161 5h ago edited 5h ago

Is Paradise Lost the first example of a fanfiction so popular that it changed the canon?

Edit: true thank you commenters! I conflated Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno in my head.

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u/Mr_Microchip 5h ago

Wouldn't Dantes Inferno count? When most people think of hell and it's punishments, they think of the 7 layers Dante created.

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u/DyingSunSeverian 5h ago

It’s both of them. The Inferno gave us a dominant iconography of Hell and the notion that Satan is trapped very deep underground (encased in ice, not tormented by fire). That version of Lucifer doesn’t do much except gnaw on people like Judas for eternity.

Paradise Lost gave us the popular interpretation of Satan as a vaguely sympathetic fallen angel with an axe to grind against his creator, including the famous quote “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

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u/Sad_Amphibian1275 5h ago

Dantes divine comedy was over 300 years before this so no.

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u/AltairLSAM 5h ago

I'm sure there are older examples, but it do be old.

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u/Relative-Gap-4442 5h ago

I mean quality writing is quality writing, it’s a literally a book club either way sooooo

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u/kekistanmatt 5h ago

No dante's inferno beat it by about 300 years and had the added bonus of being a self insert gary stu fanfic.

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u/Weird_Angry_Kid 5h ago

Did Paradise Lost come before or after the Divine Comedy?

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u/Odd-Wealth5967 1h ago

Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno never actually changed any canon btw

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u/Odd-Wealth5967 1h ago

The Devil/Satan being "attractive" in terms of being a tempter as been a thing since the Bible itself. And if we are referring to physical attractiveness (or the closest thing that is related to a "good" appearance), then that is still rooted in the Bible/traditional Christian interpretation. Christian theologians typically cite the prophecy to the King of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:12-17) as also referring to Satan, where the "guardian cherub" that was "in Eden," who "sinned" and was "thr[own] to the Earth," was formerly "the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty." Satan can also disguise himself as an "angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Paradise Lost doesn't actually really divert from these traditional teachings in this regard. In that poem, Satan pre-fall is referred to as the brightest of the angels (nothing is actually explicitly said about him being physically attractive/handsome/sexy, but PL's angels at times are described as being beautiful, so we can assume that pre-fall Satan would be the most beautiful), but after his expulsion from Heaven, the poem portrays Satan as gradually losing his former appearance. Soon after his fall, in Book 1, the narrator states that Satan has not yet lost all his original brightness (so he may still appear good-looking), but as the story progresses, by the time we get to Book 4, Satan's shape has become so horribly deformed, "thou resembl'st now Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foule," that other angels do not recognize him.

When readers call Paradise Lost's Satan "attractive," they are probably typically referring to the appeal of his character/how he is written, not his actual default physical appearance. But I do know there's certainly a lot of fanart of Paradise Lost that takes some liberties when depicting that Satan (or depict that scene in Book 1), see William Blake or Thomas Lawrence, for example.

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u/dohdudeh 5h ago

Considering how like a majority of Christian’s believe in the whole mythology about demons and the devil based on this it is basically cannon

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u/AltairLSAM 5h ago

Yeah, that's why I said that it was only canon after Paradise Lost was published. It wasn't canon before then.

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u/Afraid_Pack_4661 5h ago

"Post Crisis" reboot?

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u/sonerec725 5h ago

I mean, the verses in Ezekiel that many Christians ascribe to describing Lucifer describes him as "perfect in beauty"

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u/HighChinaman 5h ago

We've all seen the biblically accurate angels, I'm not trusting that book to tell me what attractive is.

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u/Insidion25 2h ago

I like them. They look badass. I trust them more in defending me than some chubby baby with wings and a tiny bow and arrow.

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u/RobotCrow12 3h ago

Well, the idea is that demons appear in all shapes and forms, but mostly ones that you will find aluring... where as angels just show up as horrors beyond our comprehension.

"Be not afraid" said that makes everyone very much afraid

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u/altymcalty-2 2h ago

It's one of the parts of trench crusade I love the most. That god, a being so vast and powerful that he created not only humanity but all of reality, is an Eldritch entity so far above us that he can't interfere beyond the smallest boons and advantages without accidentally destroying earth.

A genuinely omnipotent, omnipresent being that could 100% fix the issues within the setting, but at the same time destroy his followers as well, because he is just that powerful. Like a human trying to fix a war between ants

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u/AdAggravating872 58m ago

Funny enough “biblically accurate” angels aren’t all that biblically accurate

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u/Weak-Feedback-8379 5h ago

But only before he fell from heaven.

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u/CareRarely 5h ago

My understanding is that he can transform himself even if he did lose his beauty.

2 Corinthians 11:14 "And no wonder! For Satan disguises himself as an angel of light."

https://giphy.com/gifs/3oz8xwB849cRBNV6Fi

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u/Weak-Feedback-8379 5h ago

How do you know that God‘s angels aren’t just ugly as fuck?

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u/CareRarely 5h ago

You know with all the talk of "biblically accurate angels" maybe you're right about that🤔

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u/NovelInteraction711 5h ago

“biblically accurate angels“ THOSE ARE SERAPHIM THEY ARE DIFFERENT

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u/DyingSunSeverian 5h ago

Yeah that’s a common point of confusion. The angels in the Bible as we think of them - the messengers and guardians - appear in the guise of man, they’re noted to be “off” in some way, sometimes terrifying, but not because of the way they look, just something else emanating from them.

The actual “biblically accurate angels” people reference are more like… constructs, taking care of God’s throne.

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u/CareRarely 5h ago

Gotta be honest that's going well beyond my expertise

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u/Holler_Prof 3h ago

Sodom and Gamorra certainly makes an argument against that

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u/Leaping_Wizards 5h ago

But that's like, in the eye of the beholder, maybe they're not made for humans to Kirk their way through angeldom? At least without a lot of effort.

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u/AngelTheMarvel 5h ago

Really depends on what you mean by canon. For a long time the devil was just a disgusting beast

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u/Big_Remove_3686 5h ago

No it not the first appearance of this came from Paradise Lost by John Milton

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u/Firemoth717 5h ago

So basically it is lore accurate, since that’s the basis of the Satan character majority of people are familiar with.  

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u/Big_Remove_3686 5h ago

It not lore accurate to you know this little book called The Bible. Where Satan originally from.

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u/Firemoth717 4h ago

Where Satan as a concept originated from, not Satan as a character though.  Satan is barely a coherent and formed character in the bible, especially the OT.  

Paradise Lost expanded and added on to Satan just as the NT writers did from the OT.  

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u/captain_blazar 1h ago

There are certainly references (going by Christian theology, I will note that Judaic theology does not support the notion of fallen angels/lucifer in the same way) in both the Old and New Testaments that allude to the general beauty of angels and also specifically to Lucifer’s own personal beauty—he’s called the Daystar and the Morningstar, an association that was referring directly to his beauty in a way people of the time definitely would have picked up on (this is in Isaiah, it was definitely a doomsaying of a current king at the time but very figurative language of a shining beautiful star, the son of the morning/daystar/morningstar falling from heaven, is used, and Christian tradition considers this to be a scripture regarding Lucifer’s fall from heaven and that Isaiah was drawing an analogy between the king he was prophesying doom for and fallen Lucifer, saying this great and prideful king would also get his ass cast down); Christian doctrine also largely supports the idea that the angel mentioned by Ezekial to have formerly occupied the garden of Eden, covered in beauty and precious stones and anointed by God until said cherub was unrighteous, typically interpreted in this case as Lucifer’s pride and subsequent fall; finally Paul talks about the devil disguising himself as an angel of light, which would make since if he is or was once beautiful prior to the fall.

Beyond that, literal centuries before fricking Danté, church scholars like Augustine of Hippo (who I don’t even like, but I’ll admit to his foundational contributions) supported the inclusion of the above mentioned scriptures when forming doctrines on the devil in the early (Christian, again, in Judaism it is different) church.

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u/Few-Advantage2538 5h ago

Depends a lot