Very interesting thesis about demigod backstories.
Demigod Forums
So I was looking around at Tom Chicks site and I found something rather interesting:
I've no doubt Tom already knows all this, but I want to make a point about how many of the stories are morally gray.
Sedna was nice enough to raise the dude that tried to kill her from the dead after her giant kitty whomped him, but she also abandoned her tribe without a thought.
Oak is an undead suit of armor who raises the spirits of the fallen to fight on his side. He's also an outcast from his people, and battles demon things.
Regulus brutally murdered a large number of people with a giant crossbow for tearing his wings off. He's also estranged from his own kind, who consider most of humanity barbarians.
Rook is the dead champion of a bunch of downtrodden civilians raised up again as a castle.
Erebus is a nice enough chap so long as he has blood to nom. Otherwise he's an insatiable killer, more than happy to suck the life from his own mother. Which is why he wears a tunic full of blood injecting needles.
The Unclean Beast is pretty seriously unholy. His back story is icky.
The Torchbearer burned his father to death after his father murdered TB's lover and all his friends with fire. And now he's insane.
The Queen of Thorns wants to conquer humanity and is an outcast from her kind.
Rook is obviously good, but Regulus is a mass murderer. The TB was driven to evil, while the QoT embraced evil of her own free will. Sedna and Oak are superficially different, but both have a very specific view of their particular duty, and are disinterested in those things or individuals that prevent them from carrying it out. Erebus strives for culture and goodness, but cannot fully master his insatiable inner beast. Only the Unclean Beast is straightforwardly evil -- he's the unholy spawn of a demon brought to life by a man willing to sacrifice his own wife for power.
There are also some neat, non-good vs. evil connections between the various characters -- for instance, the portrayal of Sedna and QoT as the dual face of nature, with one aloof but nurturing, and the other intimate and murderous. Or Oak and Erebus as two individuals trapped in roles forced upon them by society, embodied most thoroughly in the unbreakable connection both have to the clothes they wear.
That's all I can bring myself to write, but there's definitely more to say on the subject.
It's neat how interconnected it all is. First time I've really felt like a game had characters instead of stereotypes.
. He is not evil, he just is classified that way by the people who are afraid and too ignorant to understand him (I'm refering to the people in the story, not you guys :P)
. Light and dark DGs have more in common than you think. So the OP is right...there's definetly a nuance here...