What's up with jackass elves?

Fantasy's been beating the same dead horse for the past 6 or so decades, so I'm not surprised that even if they reach the clean perfected form of a trope, they are trying to re-think and re-chew it.

Me, I would just like to see more original races in Western fantasy. Honestly, who buys a game or book these days only because pointy eared elves and warty orcs chase each other in it?

Sorry, thread derail. Just my peeves.

edited 3rd Jan '12 11:07:53 AM by Vree

While I agree with what you say, it should be noted that most original races would either end up looking like orcs or elves anyway (if not in appearance then in function), or are so completely alien that their inherent 'weirdness' would dominate every story they star in (or at least you'd have to devote a chapter or two to exposition on this race). So rather then trying so hard to actively avoid the trope, you might as well give in and have some fun with it.

edited 3rd Jan '12 12:45:33 PM by Kayeka

I think people just really hate the Superior Species trope nowadays.

I wrote a short story for a fiction writing class in a standard fantasy setting. I was complimented for using standard races and terminology so I didn't have to waste too much time explaining anything new.

Function according to whom? I've written stories in which a culture or species served as orcs to another culture or species, but that only mattered to protagonists from the second culture or species. (I'm likely to have at least one protagonist from the first group.)

Edit: And while I'm at it, is it really that bad for me to write stories in which I devote a bit of exposition to the races I've created? (I seldom need an entire chapter to explain their relevant traits, especially since I never utilize a Planet of Hats.)

edited 4th Jan '12 3:31:50 AM by feotakahari

Warhammer is indeed a World of Jerkass. The Bretonnians are jerks towards their peasantry, their "noble knights" only acting such whenever a strong enough king has them on a tight enough leash. The High Elves are jerks towards everyone because they believe they're the only ones who can properly counter Chaos. The Wood Elves are jerks towards everyone because they think they might destroy their home forest. The Dark Elves are jerks because they get off on it. The Dwarves are jerks because they've lost most of their kingdom and consider everything every other race makes complete and utter gobshite. Chaos consists of four jerk gods and all their jerk followers. Beastmen are jerks because they don't like civilization. The Skaven have "backstabbing jerk" as their racial hat.

The only race that doesn't consist of complete assholes is the Empire, and even they are no saints, what with their whole cult of witch hunters.

I personally prefer the delicate balance that Warhammer does have with its High Elves. Their fluff is generally spent 50-50 between being arrogant, hubristic and dickish, and being proud, decent and fair, so that they kind of balance the two things, creating a sort of "elves vary as much as people do" atmosphere that I do enjoy.

Don't forget the Lizardmen, who are less "deliberately jerkish" and more "totally indifferent to whether anyone else lives or die".

I always play that High Elves and especially Grey Elves are very superior and distainful toward humans where as Wood Elves are more like hippies but if you start to seriously cut into their forests they will get very belligerent. Dwarves I usually play as dour to humans unless they have a reason to believe the humans are worthy of the honor of a dwarven friendship. I also believe that Dwarves would get pretty jackassy if a non-dwarf asked to be taught how to create adamantine and forge it into armor and weapons. Basically I also play that dwarves will have a trade city outside their strongholds where they will interact with other races but it being a great honor if non-dwarves were actually let into their ancestral halls and holds.

Light elves good, dark elves bad is probably Celtic in origin, definitely not Scandinavian although that line of thinking is in some modern "pagan" movements that otherwise draw more heavily on Norse myths. The very concept of "Drow" kind of disturbs me. All the Norse elves were pale, Svart meant black hair, not black skin!(blar)

The differences between light elves and dark elves were Light ones living on a world ruled by Frey and took after his appearance. They were exactly the same in behavior. Oh, and of course the age old scholarly debate on whether or not the Svartalfar and Dokkalfar were the same thing and if either group was the same thing as Dwarves. I suppose making the light elves evil is just going back to Norse myth. If the dark elves are bad the light ones have to be too.

Interesting Norse myth implies that elves were more numerous than humans, since Thor was man's best friend but Frey was the most liked out of all the Aesir. Well that or that the majority of the races simply liked Frey more and together they out numbered humanity but their being basis for elves out numbering humans goes against pretty much every fantasy work I know of.

Also there's discussion that the Svartalfar were actually one and the same as the dwarves. Talk about concept divergence.

The Our Elves Are Better trope technically began with J.R.R. Tolkien. At least in modern fiction. However, most of his elves were nice people, save for a few notable exceptions(Feanor and his sons, Meaglin, Saeros etc.). It's Tolkien's imitators(DND, WOW, Christopher Paolini etc.) that really started making elves arrogant jackasses. Even Peter Jackson's films do this somewhat: Legolas' father isn't THAT big a dick in the books.

Edited by asril on Oct 30th 2018 at 5:13:57 AM

Geez the necromancy much ._.

I think another thing that does not help is the whole fact that elves always live much longer than humans, or any other race for that matter. Look at most sets of fantasy races and you'll find that elves will outlive most if not all of the other races. That sort of longevity often gets played out as elves being condescending to everyone else.

edit:

Oh, did not notice this thread was necro'd

Edited by Rymyll_the_Wanderer on Oct 31st 2018 at 9:25:57 AM

It's a sign of the times. Initially, elves symbolized what people wished to aspire to. Now they symbolize what people have refused to even entertain/consider/dare hope for.

It's what happens when a collection of cultures goes from aspiring to be more to a mass of concentrated despair & cynicism, and this cliche represents and dare I say - in its own miniscule way - helps reinforce it.

Immortality and an eternity to perfect every skill tends to give you a superiority complex.

Most modern fantasy has compensated for this with the elves being decadent, stagnant, and unimaginative.

This. If you've been around that long, you're bound to at least think you're smarter than everyone else, if not better, due to having seen more.

Worth noting that even Tolkien did the "jackass elf" thing in The Silmarillion. A big part of why Middle-Earth is screwed up is because of Elves making a mess of things.

The good elves are more or less the only ones left because the jackass ones got themselves killed off.

Edited by M84 on Jan 3rd 2019 at 5:58:26 PM

>Jackass ones

Did you mean: The entire House of Feanor

And then there's the Shadow of Mordor games which had Celebrimbor, one of the biggest jackass elves of all if not the biggest one. Even Sauron got a dig at him over this.

Come to think of it, he's a member of the House of Feanor too.

Edited by M84 on Jan 3rd 2019 at 10:40:01 PM

Basically, Aulë's bois are the ones stirring up trouble on Arda.

Noldor Elves, asshole Dwarves, Saruman, Sauron.

Manwë has no problem children, and Ulmo only had Ossë, who went a bit wild sometimes until his wife reminded him who's the boss.