Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Looks like some wires got crossed here
, started by Tyoria on Dec 22nd 2010 at 4:38:53 AM
Old description (Nov 2020); tweaked to be less about elves after Our Elves Are Better was disambiguated:
Our Elves Are Different, and better than you. They are taller, thinner, prettier, more graceful, better-read, more intelligent, more environmentally conscious ("In Harmony with Nature" is the usual phrasing), more socially progressive, less aggressive or confrontational (while still being fearsome warriors), and better craftspeople, too.
Oh, and they're magic.
In fact, the only quality elves seem to be lacking is humility. Even when an author tries to specify that these elves are perfect, wonderful, etc., and humble, the elves still can't resist lecturing humans on their errant ways. Sometimes the elf will try a Socratic approach — asking, for example, why humans will kill each other, because of course elves never fight amongst themselves — but they don't need to. Any excuse is good to put the silly little humans in their place.
Strangely, the humans are not allowed to take offense, demand politeness, defend themselves, or — heaven forbid — mock the elves right back. If anyone tries, the elf will sniff disdainfully and utterly destroy the human's argument, thus proving the elves right yet again. This trope is not limited to elves. Whenever you have a group that thinks itself as just completely superior to anyone else and ignores all arguments against it, you have this trope.
There are no elves in real life, far as we know, but it is very prevalent in humanity with certain individuals and groups adopting this stance. Which individuals and groups? Take your pick, you may have seen such elves in online, political or religious discussion. We're not actually looking to catalogue them, mind you.
Not a bad thing if the creator intends for the characters in question to appear arrogant and annoying. But there are plenty of cases in which even the audience is supposed to share this view, which has you ending up with an entire race of Mary Sues. Done wrong, it's an easy way to turn an entire race into a race of Scrappies.
Screw You, Elves! is for humans who do take offense (and make it very clear). In contrast with humans, dwarves are not only allowed but expected to argue with elves.
Edited by Synchronicity
This trope has an entry for Star Trek. How does it not include the Vulcans? Could someone please add the Vulcans?
God is God of truth, and thus of current webcomic example links. See also: Grammar Nazi Hedge Trimmer Hide / Show Replies
It's a wiki. If you feel the Vulcans fit the trope, you can edit it yourself.
Removed this from under World Of Warcraft:
- Some of the Pandaren can come off this way too, particularly Taran Zhu, who dismisses the Alliance/Horde conflict as a petty "race war". Infuriating certain people who may have been fighting their opposing faction for years and then have to listen to a guy with little experience with the outside world and who doesn't know about the actual reasons behind the war lecture them on how wrong it is.
That's basically just saying "I didn't like this thing this one guy said and I would have wanted to argue." There's no "they dismiss your arguments" here; Taran Zhu at that point doesn't dismiss anyone's counterarguments, because there aren't any. I also haven't seen other examples of such an attitude, at least as of yet.
(The above is reason enough to cut the entry. Now let me go onto a tangent: he's also exactly right, even if you could argue it's just a good guess. The Alliance and the Horde are basically defined by what races belong to them, and, for all the backstory's complexity, their animosity is wholly irrational and basically comes down to "We've been fighting those guys (or the ones under the same name) before and now we don't trust them and will rather fight them again than even try to be fair." Do you think it is not typical for a race war to have gone on for a long time and involve people hating the other side?)
Edited by 86.50.74.185 Hide / Show Replies
Alright, I know I'm a bit late on this, but I'm the original poster and I wanted to defend my entry.
First of all, the description on the original article indicates that both "no counterargument given" and "counterargument completely destroyed" are valid for Can'tArgueWithElves. Taran Zhu falls under the former.
Strangely, the humans are not allowed to take offense, demand politeness, defend themselves or — heaven forbid — mock the elves right back.
Secondly, there are legitimate reasons for the war. First and foremost being the Cataclysm wrecking Azeroth and placing a strain on resources. Then there's the Forsaken's plague, which was developed by experimenting on Alliance citizens while the two factions were at peace (it's use at Wrathgate was unintentional on Sylvanas' part, but it's development was not). And yes, there is also the fact that Garrosh thinks the Horde should rule the world. But what's the Alliance supposed to do about that? Let him wipe them out because fighting is wrong? The Pandaren themselves have fought wars for survival against the Mantid and Mogu. How are those wars any different, except that Taran Zhu tells us they are because reasons?
Thirdly, Taran Zhu is a hypocrite. He claims the outsiders are the ones destroying Pandaria, but he allows his own hatred of the outsiders to make HIM vulnerable to Sha possession. You might think that's the point of the character -to show that no one is above the danger of the Sha- except that Zhu is neither humbled by the experience nor called out on it by anyone else, and as soon as he's saved -by the Horde/Alliance- goes right back to blaming everything on them. It is also his insistence on giving Garrosh a fair trial that leads to his escape and creation of the Iron Horde. Yeah, those peaceful ways really turned out great there.
Taran Zhu is a character who is very obviously afflicted with Moral Myopia, but is never called out on this by anyone else and the story keeps trying to push him as right even when he's clearly not. Isn't that the very definition of Can't Argue with Elves?
Edited by Tyrathius
Those sound like better arguments. They're not the same ones as the original ones in the sense they don't make the old entry as it was written any better. I'd say that maybe it could work as an example if it was written to give some of this information.
Edited by VVK
- The Eldar's arrogance is also rather unjustified, since for all their power they are still a Dying Race in even worse straits than humanity. And for all of humanity's flaws, at least they did not singlehandedly create a new Chaos god with their debauchery (said Chaos god being the primary reason the Eldar are a Dying Race).
Removed this since it's indicated that humans created not one but three of the chaos gods active in our Galaxy (and are probably going to be responsible for a fourth one). They were also created about 30,000 years before the Eldar empire even fell.
Edited by 199.180.97.211 Hide / Show Replies
Huh? I have never heard that humans created any Chaos Gods. The Eldar's collective decay did create one (Slaanesh) but that's it.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Nurgle definitely, Tzeentch and Khorne are possibilities, and Khorne has a lot of of elder daemons going very far back plucked from Terran history.
I dunno, but you might want to ask here.
Cut this from the Elf Quest entry:
- That's a bit of a stretch. True, the first humans we meet are genocidal religious fanatics, but we later learn just how much of that is Bearclaw's own fault - largely because the writers (who are, after all human themselves) were uncomfortable that they'd given this impression. The evil humans (who may be superstitious and ignorant, but not stupid) do have reasons for what they do (usually greed or religious fanaticism), and are at least recognized as being fantastically dangerous by any elves who are familiar with humans. Humans who worship elves have usually been manipulated into doing so by villainous elves (especially Winnowill) or mistaken the elves' very real magical powers for signs of divinity. Given the choice, heroic elves prefer to deal with humans as equals, and any humans that get to know them soon learn how to argue with them. If they tend to win arguments with random humans they encounter throughout the story, it's because the arguments tend to be some variation on "No, I'm actually not a demon."
Just because it's a roundabout way of saying it's a Justified Trope...and also something of a Justifying Edit.
Edited by 118.208.241.228
I think we need to rein in, or at least take a good look at the video games example of this trope. It seems that there is some conflict over whether the "ignores all arguments against the elves" part of this trope should also include the inability of the player character to actively argue against them as well through dialogue options. I feel like there should be a distinction between the subject race ignoring a player's counter-arguments, and the game itself not even allowing for counter-arguments, as the latter will swing more into the Creator's Pet category.
Edited by Killerweinerdog