Screw You, Elves! moments in Tabletop Games.
- The sidhe in Changeling: The Dreaming. The fact that their return from Arcadia knocked over hundreds of years of commoner fae-established rule and set up a new "divine right of kings" was not met with loving acceptance. Even after the Accordance War was settled (yes, there was a war over the sidhe), commoner groups still look at "the pointy-eared freaks" funny, and the game makes it clear that just because a sidhe has a sense of rule, that doesn't mean he or she has the sense to rule.
- The Fairest Kith in Changeling: The Lost of the New World of Darkness. While the flavor of wonderment changes with individual seemings, the basic premise of the Fairest is that they are the fairest ones of all, and thus are egoists and manipulators by nature. For many players, a selfless, kind Fairest is actually more suspicious than one who acts like an arrogant prat. That said - it's also heavily implied and in several places stated that a lot of the hate the Fairest get really is sheer jealousy of their looks and unjustified paranoia that they might be a Double Agent, which is unfair in that Fairest are as much victims as any other Lost.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- In the Eberron setting you can quite easily argue with the elves. Some, like the Valaes Tairn, would like to disagree. The only problem is that you often have to beat whichever elf you argue with in single combat to prove you're right; considering the elves of the Valaes Tairn are the meanest cavalry on the planet (even more badass than the dinosaur-riding halflings of the Talenta Plains) it could also be filed under "played straight, with added violence".
- Happens a lot in Forgotten Realms. Of course, elves did a lot in their time, but now... Not so much. Not surprising, as most elves there are at best noble-but-xenophobic savages and at worst bitter relics of a culture that fell past the decadence stage about a thousand years ago. Myth Drannor was their last attempt to take the situation under control that left fond memories to many non-elves — most unsavory details being forgotten. Some sourcebooks even noted that there are elves out there that hold to the view that when elves try to do something big, especially with Elven High Magic, it tends to backfire, if not in a way that harms the elves, then at least in going too far. Members of other races are generally kept from calling the elves on this by not knowing about some moments of their history — which led to several Unreliable Expositor in-jokes — or the elven involvement in them, but at least there are people around to try to remind elven leaders about previous mistakes.
- Exalted: "Screw You, Raksha!" is right there in the job description of the Creation-loving Exalts, especially Lunars. On broader scope, this is also an ongoing motif in Creation: to do in people who claim to be better than you. So far, it has been: Screw You Primordials, Screw You Solars, and Screw You Living Beings.
- Hunter: The Reckoning and Hunter: The Vigil are both entire gamelines of telling the elves just where they can stick their magic.
- Magic: The Gathering has toyed with this over the years:
- A "Goblins Vs. Elves" addition has choice quotes like "You don't live in forests, you burn them!", and most recently, Lorwyn block. Though initially, the elves are played up as pointy-eared Nazis (that is, they feel that beauty is everything, and nobody uglier than they has any right to live. Oh, and everyone else is uglier than them.) who never get their comeuppance, when the followup, Shadowmoor came out, they are taken from green-black to green-white, from ruling the idyllic, sunlit Lorwyn waited on hand and cloven foot (they have hooves), to fending for their very survival as the only non-malevolent race in the darkness of Shadowmoor, fighting off everything that thinks they look tasty, and cutting their own hair.
- Also the Phyrexians have their flavor of this trope
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- Talislanta makes a huge deal out of not having any elves, which is probably the first thing most people learn about it. Except for the Ariane, Danuvians, Mandalans, Marukans, Mirin, Muses, Phantasians, and Thaecians, who just happen to be slender and graceful, with pointed ears, being descendants of mythical empires from the distant past and living in wondrous cities, where they retain their educated and spiritual societies, but are not elves at all. Really, they are not.
- Traveller: Vilani were more then a bit like this despite the fact that they were only Transplanted Humans. But then the Vilani met the Terrans. And the Terrans said Screw You, Elves! by demonstrating certain cultural habits on Planet Terra. And after that no one ever said that Earth was an Insignificant Little Blue Planet ever again.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- It tends to be less Screw You Eldar and more "Brother Janus, xenos witch, Five Rounds Rapid". The only reasons the Imperium hasn't wiped out the Eldar yet are 1) being a race of psykers, they can use their foresight to protect themselves, and 2) Eldar craftworlds are extremely well protected, and whilst it is technically possible to attack and destroy them, (it has been done, by the Invaders Space Marines, though that was a very small Craftworld) it frequently isn't worth the losses (They've lost entire Battlefleets trying to take them down. Also, the survivors of that Craftworld got help from others and destroyed the Invaders Fortress-Monastery. They currently have 12 Marines remaining). It doesn't help that the Eldar have an unjustified sense of superiority to everyone that isn't one of them along with a Never My Fault attitude (Like everyone else in the setting), despite the fact that the Eldar opened the Eye of Terror and caused a Chaos god to come into existence through their own hubris and hedonism (The Craftworld Eldar are the descendants of the Eldar who tried to stop the out-of-control hedonism before leaving, and the Exodites left long before then).
- In their 3rd edition backstory, this was the response of the Necrontyr, a sickly and short-lived race, to the nigh-immortal Old Ones: insane, bitter jealousy that caused a war of such scope and horror that the Warp, as a reflection of mortal souls, was transformed into a realm of nightmares. As of the 5th edition, the war was started because the Necrontyr's leader needed a common enemy to unite them against.
- The Tau get a weaker version of this, in that their relatively reasonable approach (such as offering surrender, or pulling out of a quagmire) is considered cowardice by the Imperium. Note that this mostly applies to Imperial military, Imperial civilians are often glad to take up the Tau on their offer of better living conditions, medical science, etc. in exchange for joining the Greater Good.
- Present in Warhammer Fantasy:
- Though the realms of mankind have often found common cause with Elvenkind against the likes of Chaos, many human characters aren't bothered by the fact that the elves are on their way to extinction, and "then all that remains shall be left for Man."
- In many parts of the Empire exists an "Ear Tax". A penny per pointed ear, to be paid for being an elf. On pain of removal.
- The Dwarfs had their moment four thousand years ago with the War of Vengeance (not the War of the Beard) against the High Elves, resulting in the death of the elven king, the capture of the Phoenix Crown, and the elves' retreat from their Old World colonies. Shame the conflict also left the dwarfs with a Vestigial Empire... To make things worse, the war was started because of dark elf raiders masquerading as high elves. The matter could have been solved relatively peacefully, but the then-king of the elves was a jackass who sent the dwarf ambassadors home with their beards shaved off.
- Sometimes this attitude backfires on the non-elves though. In the Storm of Chaos campaign, the Empire were getting wrecked by a huge army of Chaos daemons, when enters Loremaster Teclisnote who wipes out the entire Chaos daemon army with a single spell. To thank him, the Grand Theogonist calls him a Dirty Coward for using magic. Teclis at this point gets annoyed and decides to show humans why you shouldn't taunt Cthulhu by pissing off and letting the ungrateful humans beat the daemons the old-fashioned and hard way, with steel and gunpowder (he knew they would win but wanted to teach them a lesson).
