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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mordhau" data-source="post: 8504631" data-attributes="member: 7032137">I don't think it matters what we label them.  Alignment has always been stupid.  But the point of them is that they're inherently monstrous in what they do.  They eat brains.You can say that's not evil from their perspective; it's just like humans eating pigs.  In some ways they work better if we remove the objective cosmological labels, because a lot of the horror comes from the pure indifference they have towards the values we place upon ourselves.  (Moral relativism is in a way, a horrific concept in itself!)We can have the Pratchett style Mind Flayer if we like, who works a shift a down at the local bar and who no longer eats people's brains, thanks to a special artifical brain that his gnome buddy has rigged up out back that can be grown from a kind of fungus and gives him equal sustenance.  You can even have a group of Illithids that meet up once a week for a meeting about their addiction and count how many days it is since they last devoured a brain.But the key move here is not really political.  It's from the horrific to the comic.  (And the latter only really works because it's clearly a subversion)In a way the comic move is the more progressive, because it in a way literalises the idea of Mind Flayers as just another type of person, and shows tolerance and a broader "humanity".   The horror aspect doesn't really have a progessive message.  But it doesn't need to.  Horror explores our darker tendencies.</blockquote>

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