Line #43 PlayingWith/CantArgueWithElves


1	'''Basic Trope''': Elves or a similar 'superior' entity are depicted as being superior to humans in every way (culturally, morally, technologically, etc.) and frequently say so. The humans are consistently unable or unwilling to object to this.
2	* '''Straight''': Among the party of adventurers who form the protagonists is an elf warrior, Avaril. Avaril is much superior in combat and physical ability to his human allies and frequently raises the fact that elves have a more 'evolved' social system and cultural mores than humans. Kate and George, Avaril's allies, never call him on this.
3	* '''Exaggerated''':
4	** Literally every communication between elves and humans consists of the elves delivering [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech a lengthy monologue on how elves are infinitely superior in every way to humans]], while the humans just stand there and meekly listen.
5	** When the elves or another species bring in unedited evidence that they are objectively and immeasurably superior to humanity beyond time and space, humans are ''literally'' incapable of arguing verbally or any other way to oppose them, as the superior species' mere power prevents them from physically speaking to them however they wish, even positively.
6	* '''Downplayed''':
7	** Elves tend to ramble on, but they are fair to all. Avaril will often include things in these monologues like "Now, the human general Leo once came up with a much better plan for the war than the elves did" and "Your style was better than elves for sure, but I have a few suggestions on how you could improve" that show that the elves don't think they are the only ones who can be great.
8	** Avaril snarks a bit about those crazy humans and their love of fire and propensity to wear pants, but overall he acknowledges his companions' strengths and doesn't think that elven morality is a priori superior to that of other races.
9	* '''Justified''':
10	** Avaril has a point; [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters Humans are or have been bastards]] in this situation and are to blame for the current crisis, while elf society devotes itself to peace.
11	** Avaril is clearly presented as a bigoted, incompetent fool, but he has very powerful connections and can make things very difficult for Kate and George, meaning that they must hold their tongues during his self-righteous lectures even as they're constantly proving his limited viewpoint wrong.
12	** Elves are TheFairFolk and project a magical glamor that makes arguing against their ways literally unthinkable for all entranced by it.
13	** Elves are the oldest race around, and ''most'' elves will admit that they're better than everybody because they had been there, done that, and survived to wear the T-shirt out long ago ... and everybody knows it. Either Kate and George know Avaril is normal for elves willing to go adventuring--and they do want to benefit from the lessons the elves learned--or are aware that, actually, Avaril is [[BlueAndOrangeMorality by elven standards]] treating them like fellow elves.
14	** Elves only recently made FirstContact with other sapient races. Avaril isn't prepared for the comparative BlueAndOrangeMorality of his human companions, so of course he thinks poorly of them compared to the only culture he's known for most of his life. Kate and George let it go because they know that Avaril [[UndyingLoyalty would die for them if need be]] and he doesn't ''actually'' think that humans are weak, just bizarre, and he'll eventually get over it when he gets more used to elven culture not being the only way to do things.
15	** For one reason or another, Kate and George enjoy being demeaned and put down. Avaril picked up on this at some point and really leaned into it afterwards.
16	* '''Inverted''':
17	** Avaril is a weak fighter, generally inferior to his human colleagues, and Kate and George spend most of their time telling him how useless he is. Avaril rarely responds.
18	** HumanityIsSuperior
19	** Avaril has a massive inferiority complex; he constantly bemoans the woeful state of Elven society, and Kate and George rarely dispute this.
20	** Avaril likes to tell the humans George and Kate YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre.
21	* '''Subverted''':
22	** After another of Avaril's lectures, Kate essentially says "ScrewYouElves", calls him out on his arrogance, and defeats him in combat, demonstrating that humans are superior in some ways to elves.
23	** Avaril claims that elves are superior ... [[BlueAndOrangeMorality but his priorities and standards are very, very different from those common in humans]].
24	** Avaril is straight-up deluded, and is to elf-kind as the worst {{Eagle Land}}ers are to America. [[StopBeingStereotypical (Less bigoted elves find him deeply embarrassing.)]]
25	* '''Double Subverted''':
26	** Kate attempts to call out Avaril, but Avaril easily rebuts her points, disarms her in combat and, to add insult to injury, delivers a pointed lecture about how humanity's base impulse towards responding to challenges with violence is so much less effective than the way of peace the elves have developed.
27	** Kate calls out and defeats Avaril ... whereupon he seamlessly switches to browbeating everyone with elven ''moral'' superiority -- after all, only a crude simple human would attempt to resolve an intellectual debate, even one which she was losing so badly, with brute combat. He wraps up by explaining that [[ILetYouWin he allowed her to win]] to spare her feelings, pointing out numerous flaws in her technique, and noting that with her subpar human reflexes she can't do much to improve on them. The rest of the party sits by and nods in agreement.
28	** Even when Kate, George, and Avaril agree to measure humans and elves by the same standards, they find (to Avaril's smug delight) that all elves are orders of magnitude better than all humans in every field.
29	** Other elves are just subtler in their arrogance.
30	* '''Parodied''':
31	** Avaril, like most elves, is vain, self-obsessed and believes in a highly exaggerated (and inaccurate) belief in his and his fellow elves' abilities and superiority. He (and by extension, his fellow elves) are actually very incompetent and flawed, but Kate and George refuse to comment more out of an awkward desire to avoid puncturing his fragile ego and starting a fight rather than sharing his beliefs.
32	** Elves are far and away the best species ... at gardening. Avaril can't help but lecture his somewhat botanically ignorant companions about how those are ''hydrangeas'', not hibiscus, and explain the proper way to maintain strawberry patches. Kate and George never comment because everyone ''but'' the elves realizes that [[SkewedPriorities the topic isn't that important in the grand scheme of things]].
33	** George and Avaril debate recent health care legislation.
34	** Avaril is the only elf to mock humans like this, but he's treated as the OnlySaneMan among his people for it despite being mostly wrong.
35	** Avaril and the other elves are just figments of the humans' imagination, but they're still treated like real and superior beings.
36	** Every time Avaril calls out human deficiencies of any kind, Kate experiences ShamefulShrinking. He criticises humans so often and so harshly that by the end of the story, she's too small to be seen with the naked eye. Avaril doesn't even notice where she's gone until George tells him what he did to her and that she's probably dead thanks to him.
37	* '''Zig-Zagged''':
38	** Avaril is self-righteous and elitist; however, after Kate calls him out on this, he is humbled and makes a genuine effort to reshape his view of the world. However, his years of conditioning are hard to break through, meaning that he will often move between a humbler approach and retaining his arrogant view of the world.
39	--->'''Avaril''': That was a Thunderbolt. See how useless you humans are, without magi ... OWW!!!\
40	'''Kate''': [[MugglesDoItBetter That was a cricket bat. See how useless Fae are when they underestimate humans?]]\
41	'''Avaril''': Yes...\
42	'''Kate''': So, what did you learn?\
43	'''Avaril''': [[FantasticAesop Cast Arcane Barrier before monologuing.]]
44	** Some elves are implacably guilty of CulturalPosturing, others have an instinctive CulturalCringe, and a third camp recognises all the races' comparative strengths and weaknesses and wants them to co-operate, using their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses. The power of each viewpoint within elf society and the reactions from the other civilized races fluctuate throughout the story.
45	** Avaril goes on a rant of this nature. He makes a factual mistake and concedes it when Kate points it out. But when George points out another factual mistake, he acts as if it's a correct observation that proves his point on its own.
46	* '''Averted''':
47	** Avaril and his fellow elves are roughly equal to the other races in the world and act as such.
48	** All members of the party are the same species and come from the same culture.
49	* '''Enforced''': Avaril and the elf society is constructed as a {{utopia}} reflecting the author's beliefs and ideal view of the world; as such, the author has all the non-{{Straw Character}}s bow down to the elf viewpoint because they think the elves are entirely right and as such should naturally be agreed with.
50	* '''Lampshaded''': "Ah, so [[ThisIsThePartWhere we've reached the part of the evening where Avaril's going to lecture us about how worthless we are]] compared to him and the other elves."
51	* '''Invoked''': Avaril is explicitly included in the party to act as its moral yardstick by the elf High Council.
52	* '''Exploited''':
53	** Kate is well aware of Avaril's monologuing. In order to get the BigBad to back down, she decides to get Avaril going while the Big Bad is listening, to set up an ambush by George.
54	** His allies end up using Avaril's sheer long-windedness and smug condescension to [[BreakThemByTalking bore a villain to death]].
55	* '''Defied''': ScrewYouElves
56	* '''Discussed''': "Wait ... elves exist? I hope they don't think we're inferior or something."
57	* '''Conversed''': "Okay, so in every fantasy novel there's always a self-righteous elf lecturing the other characters about how elves are so much better than they are; elves are [[OurElvesAreDifferent usually self-righteous]], I get that, but you'd think the other characters would at least tell him to shut up every once in a while."
58	* '''Deconstructed''':
59	** All the 'lesser' races hate elf society for its arrogance, self-righteousness and elitist viewpoints, but because of their tremendous powers and abilities, the other races prefer to live in quiet resentment rather than calling the elves out and risking retribution. However, when the elves ''do'' face a threat that they cannot face alone, their habit of burning bridges comes back to bite them when none of their 'allies' is particularly willing to come to their aid: [[ScrewYouElves "If you're so superior, you can take care of this yourselves."]]
60	*** Otherwise, the [[FormalCharactersUseKeigo keigo-speaking]] {{Oni}} Senko, [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch thought to be a brute due to the fact that he's merely an ogre from the east]], manages to give out a cutting yet calm and surprisingly insightful TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, surprising nearly everyone who thought him of a brute with no culture moments prior.
61	---->'''Senko''': Avaril-san... While you may consider you and your fellow elves as higher, that is debatable. What is not, however, is the fact that ogres, like myself, are merely but brutes that lack a culture at best and are practically animals at worst. I have to object on that. If you bother to get out of your comfort zone, and actually start traveling the world, you will find so much wonderful cultures, especially if you follow me back home. We Oni have something I have never found in people for most of my travels: Humility. I have found most of the people I met on my travels, ''especially you, Avaril,'' to always boast about their achievements and put others down. While you claim that you elves have the alleged "Cream of Society", you should at least visit my society and see for yourself. To conclude: Please stop acting haughty and ignorant. There is so much more to even the most "shallow" races you have seen.
62	** Kate and George may not start arguments with Avaril every night over his moralizing, but being constantly told that they're lesser in some way (even when [[JerkassHasAPoint Avaril is sometimes right]]) irritates them and eventually causes the party to break up at the worst possible time.
63	* '''Reconstructed''':
64	** For all his obnoxious self-righteousness, Avaril is genuinely concerned about the plight of the other races, knowing that his own race did not become supremely awesome overnight. He's trying to impart wisdom brought from hard-won experience, and elven society has a kind of [[BrutalHonesty bluntness]] such that he would talk in the same manner to another elf if they were acting out of line. His delivery may annoy his allies, but he brings up enough good points that they know he means well, even if it comes across as a YouAreACreditToYourRace style of patronizing.
65	** His [[ChildishOlderSibling older, yet more immature]] and [[TheIdiotFromOsaka Kansai dialect-speaking]] sister Akira tells this to the elves while also {{Flipping the bird}}s:
66	--->'''Akira''': Yeah, an' y'all can go fuck yerselves with 'em thunderbolts an' shit too!
67	--->'''Senko''': [[OhCrap Oh no! Akira nee-san, don't, stop!]] Urgh... [[ThisIsGonnaSuck This is not ending well...]]
68	--->'''Avaril''': [[DeadpanSnarker Hahaha! And here I thought Oni were supposed to be smart...]]
69	* '''Played for Laughs''':
70	** Avaril's self-righteous lectures are clearly transposed against clear demonstrations of his ineptitude and moral fallibility for HypocriticalHumor value.
71	** When elves walk, [[FertileFeet flowers grow at their feet]]. When they march to battle, birds gather round cheering them. When they shoot their bows, their bows ''sing'' instead of just twanging like a human bow. And when an elf dies in battle, all the ravens come and lovingly cover him with flowers rather than eat him upon seeing it is an elf.
72	** Avaril is an UglyAmericanStereotype, if we change "devotion to EagleLand" with "devotion to the land of TheFairFolk", but otherwise is exactly the same ("[[RememberTheAlamo remember]] the [[Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium First Kinslaying]]!").
73	* '''Played for Horror''': The humans do not argue with the elves because the elves act as an oppressive analogue to a fascist society, and have bombarded the humans with both so much propaganda about elf superiority and harsh punishments for those who speak up and resist that human society is fearful and lacking self-worth.
74	* '''Played for Drama''': Kate, George, and Avaril can barely muster enough willpower for TeethClenchedTeamwork.
75	* '''Implied''': Elves appear to occupy the top rungs of society, but the story never expands on why this is so.
76	----
77	Well, human, if you still don't understand why we are so much better than you, you had best learn why you CantArgueWithElves.

Context PlayingWith / CantArgueWithElves