Dragons, brain damage and dead horses

I just read a very good and imaginative post about how to re-think dragons, over here. I must say, though, that one of the reason the problem appears with the silly symmetry of evil and good dragons, is alignment. Alignment rots your brain. I've said so before.

It's not surprising that the designs get kind of stale, with more and more far-fetched breath weapons. If you have to shoehorn the fantastic into a narrow minded metaphysics you will get a narrow result. The fantastic is not about that. Dragons should be like humans, of all moral shades. And colour.

Yeah, I know I'm beating a dead horse. Go read that post linked above. It's good.