Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2309748" data-attributes="member: 4937">To each as they think is best, but I think you just removed all possible depth from the concept.   If fiends - and just so we are on the same page here I mean the whole extraplanar D&D collection of demons, devils, daemons, hags, hordlings, etc. - are just like everyone else, what's the point?What's interesting about evil is generally that it is "Don't touch this with a 10ft. pole, it's evil", and people touch it anyway.  I don't think it is actually possible to understand the motivations of something that is truly evil.  Typically when people talk about evil, they project onto it things which are actually good and just twist them a little (if they are even capable of that).  I think that that is a failure of the imagination, and to imagine that demons still have wishes, desires and ideals "like everyone else" is a failure of the imagination.  I don't think that something that is actually evil does have rational sentiments the way that we understand them.  Things that are inhuman should be inhuman, and thier inhumanity is the depth of the concept.Most 'evil' presentations are to me simply no more evil than the Adams Family.  They are simply things which enjoy things that we don't.  Don't get me wrong, I adore the Adams family as a comedy, but as a presentation of evil it is incoherent and the Adams is are ultimately motivated under thier black clothing by sentiments which we associate with 'good' - family, loyalty, pleasure, freedom, creativity, etc.  One thing though that the writers of the Adams Family do get right, although they never can get it consistantly right because the resulting story would be impossible to understand or imagine, is that the Adams are inversions of what we like.  You shouldn't think that the Adams take pleasure from the things which cause us pain, although they are frequently presented that way because you couldn't understand them otherwise.   No, real evil desire things that hurt them simply for the sake of being hurt and not because they intend to enjoy it.  The gleeful anticipation is the device added by the writers because the audience can't be made to understand that they do what they don't want to do and experience what they don't want to experience because that is part of the paradox of evil.  To me nothing better conveys the experience of evil than the drug addict who has lost all savor for the drug and who knows that the drug is killing them, but who continues to take it anyway because his nature is now craving the very thing which he has come to hate.Tolkein understood evil.  That's part of the reason his story about it is so powerful.The problem with saying that evil things have desires that are just like everyone else is that, from the perspective of that person if those desires are for things which are good, then the actions that that creature takes are also good - they just happen to be not so good for you.   In renders all of moral interaction down to the level of the antelope and the lioness.   From the antelope's perspective, getting eaten by the lion is bad.   But from the lioness's perspective, eating the antelope is a very good thing which prevents starvation, provides pleasurable sensation, and produces milk for her family.   Once you turn fiends into predators having wishes and desires like everyone else, then you've denied that evil exists at all - for if a demon isnt' by definition evil then what is?   You've made your statement that everything is relative and that there is no deeper meaning to life.   Incidently of course, this might be just what the demon 'believes' - or at least says he believes in order to fulfill his nature and convince the unwary that evil has interesting depths.So maybe you should think more about evil as something not to be touched with a 10' pole.</blockquote>

Verification