Basic Trope: An Eldritch Abomination is quite friendly, despite the expectation it isn't.
- Straight: Alice and Bob meet C'thiala, who, despite being from another cosmic plane and following no familiar rules of physics, is still quite friendly and she wishes to speak to Alice and Bob to understand them better.
- Exaggerated:
- C'thiala has a Foreign Culture Fetish for human culture, and is quite the fan of certain live action and animated series, taking the time to learn various human languages, as well as human customs and history.
- The whole story is based on this.
- Downplayed:
- C'thiala is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood, and has no intention to harm humans at all, and listens to Alice and Bob's protests with understanding.
- C'thiala is rude and rather condescending, but is not at all dangerous.
- Justified:
- C'thiala, no matter how alien she is, is quite capable of understanding other moralities, and knows how powerful she is in contrast to other, lesser beings.
- C'thiala is trying to get a travel visa for our plane of existence, being polite can help a lot with that.
- Inverted:
- C'thiala regularly wipes out species without thinking, and keeps some as pets she enjoys tormenting every now and then.
- C'thiala is utterly terrified of humans when first meeting them, as she has heard all about their penchant for cruelty and/or they look like creepy crawlers to her. Then she meets Alice and Bob, who befriend her and show her that not all humans are bad.
- Pals with Jesus
- Subverted: C'thiala invites Alice and Bob to have tea with her... but they suddenly realise something is off when they see the eyes in her teacups.
- Double Subverted:
- Except those aren't eyes at all, just intricately designed sugar cubes which only look like eyes to those with three dimensional vision.
- Except those are actually C'thiala's own eyes acting separate from her body due to dimensional quirks, and she suggests Alice and Bob to pay them no mind.
- Parodied:
- C'thiala starts fangirling over Bob, and Alice can't decide if she should be more worried about the Humanoid Abomination fangirling over her boyfriend, that her boyfriend may soon be a Humanoid Abomination himself, or that they're with such an abomination anyway.
- C'thiala tries to introduce Alice and Bob to beings she describes as "her co-workers", a group of Eldritch Abominations that calls itself "The Committee" - but predictably, their workplace is nothing but Alien Geometries and incomprhensible ergonomics and aesthetics, and their attempts to explain what they actually do are such a convoluted mess of trying to speak a human language without knowing any of the translations that Alice and Bob just give up and ask C'thiala to please get them out of there.
- Zig Zagged:
- Due to conflicts over morality, C'thiala seems friendly and hostile seemingly at random, making hard to judge her attitudes to humans easily.
- C'thiala is friendly as are some other abominations, but other abominations are not - it varies depending on who you meet.
- Averted:
- No abominations are met.
- C'thiala is neither immediately friendly nor hostile.
- Enforced: C'thiala is in a fantasy series where various monsters are shown to be friendly, so having her appear had to happen.
- Lampshaded: "Shouldn't this massive, scary 20 ft monster be trying to eat us right about now?"
- Invoked: C'thiala is a Humanoid Abomination equivalent to a Bold Explorer, and thinks that being personable to the locals will allow her to chart other worlds with less problems than being hostile.
- Exploited: Albert befriends C'thiala so that she can help him understand the structure of the Universe better (hopefully without going mad from the revelations).
- Defied: C'thiala, for all her Bizarre Alien Psychology, is callous and self-absorbed, so she doesn't give a damn about what the locals think of her.
- Discussed: "Do you remember when we met that monster? She was actually quite friendly and she gave us this."
- Conversed: "See? Monsters have rights, too!"
- Implied: Bob has a Tome of Eldritch Lore on his coffee table. When questioned about it, he responds with "Oh, that's not mine - C'thiala let me borrow it to read." Several other such episodes appear throughout the story, even if C'thiala herself does not.
- Deconstructed:
- Some Eldritch Abominations are quite friendly, some are indifferent, some are extremely hostile - but because of their otherworldly nature, humans can never tell off the bat which are which, and make wrong calls all the time, to the detriment of all involved.
- C'thiala is friendly, empathetic and enjoys communicating with humans... but she also doesn't understand their basic needs, limitations, nor why some actions are dangerous and criminal while others are not. So after her new best friends turn puddles of goo after unwrapping a present she made for them, C'thiala breaks into remorseful tears that destroy all life within a 200 KM radius.
- Reconstructed:
- After a few incidents of "We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill" kind, the friendlier kind of incomprehensible otherworldly beings decide to adopt a system of universal signs for dealing with humanity and open an embassy on Earth to prevent any further misunderstandings. It works, and ties begin to be established between Earth and other planes of existence.
- C'thiala has enough foresight that on arriving to a new unfamiliar universe, she either asks those who visited before her about the laws of physics therein, or personally sees what effect her actions have on this particular world - first in an environment devoid of life, then in an area inhabited by plants and animals, and finally next to an area with local sapients and their technology. Therefore, she is generally aware of what is safe, and what shouldn't be tried without asking the locals to put on some Hazmat Suits and hide behind a concrete wall three kilometres away.
- Intended Audience Reaction: C'thiala being friendly is just one facet of the story's Central Theme - that "unknown" does not always equal "hostile".
- Played For Laughs: Through a chain of humorous events, C'thiala ends up as a Talk Show host, and becomes famous for her acerbic, literally out-of-this-world wit.
- Played For Drama: C'thiala is actually a Defector from Decadence, and she came to our world to warn it before other Humanoid Abominations like her descend on it and devour everything, with the ultimate intent of rallying humans to fight back and stop her kind dead in their tracks.
- Played For Horror: C'thiala is a perfectly friendly, supportive Eldritch Abomination, but the people around her have to be very careful, since just being in her presence means exposure to all the threats of the cosmos - the possibility to develop Lovecraftian Superpowers, or Go Mad from the Revelation, or have to get involved in a fight with some other eldritch being; all that, and more, is a risk C'thiala's True Companions have to accept.
You have to ask yourself, Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?
