Maybe people are just sick of the "We're beautiful, good, and better than you in every way" elves. I mean really, prime example of this is in Eragon. One way or another, elves are portrayed as prideful, obnoxious, and full of themselves and this is just showing that in more blunt terms.
The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.It's also a little odd, to me, that in both cases the games hewed closely to Our Dwarves Are All the Same - Moradin is still Lawful Good in 4E, and Torag is basically an expy of Moradin, right down to being the World-Forger. Mythologically speaking, dwarves were just as morally ambiguous as elves, if not moreso.
My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!The Eldar from Warhammer 40000 have to be factored in as well.
Yeah, what it comes down to is that the traditional elves really are basically prettier immortal humans who tend to boss everyone else around. It's easy to see how humans could resent that, and, well...
I guess it is.I think Our Elves Are Better is just a misperception due to the fact that most of the elves we see in The Lord of the Rings are ancient nobility/demigods. Compare the wood elves, who spend most of their time partying and trying to obtain treasure without working for it, or the elves of Hollin, whose pride and magical hubris get them into all kinds of trouble.
<><Ald: Tropes evolve. Tolkein did his elf thing, D&D followed, and it was fine. But eventually, people started getting bored with that. So, Elves were made like the Blood Elves in Warcraft, the elves of Eberron (psychotic tribal mercenaries who worship their ancestors and/or an undead council), the elves of Dark Sun. That caught on, and having fundamentally fucked-up elves became the norm. At some point, people will get bored with that and reforge the elves into something resembling more what they once were.
Same thing with Vampires; first, evil monsters, then, romantic, tragic figures, then, well, let's not get into that. And now, they're starting to become darker and scarier again, going back to their mythological roots in many cases.
You see the cycle with a lot of tropes.
Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-Tolkien gets a pass because his elves were still essentially The Fair Folk; they were just a Neutral Good version rather than Chaotic Neutral. It's not until you get Tolkien imitators that you get elves that could honestly be considered human.
Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — WatchThe thing with Tolkien elves is that he basically had two unrelated portrayals of them. In The Hobbit, they were generally chill guys who spent all their time hanging out in the woods enjoying themselves (okay, the Mirkwood elves were sort of dicks, but they had a lot more unpleasant neighbors to worry about than the Rivendell elves did). In Lord Of The Rings, elves are distant, bitter jerks who are simultaneously a) suffering from immortal ennui, b) envious of the fact that their time of being the most important dudes on middle earth is long over, and c) terrified of Sauron. The two are completely unrelated despite being the same guys because The Hobbit was originally independent from the Lord Of The Rings until the two underwent Canon Welding.
Since Lord Of The Rings is the more popular of the two, the Lawful Neutral no-fun elves became the standard and the Chaotic Good party elves fell by the wayside.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Actually, if you look at the book, Rivendell elves are near enough the same in both. The Hobbits spend weeks at Rivendell in the books, and much of that time is spent feasting, writing songs and the elves being general smart-asses about everything to everyone, including Aragorn.
The Lothlorien elves seem a bit different, though, although that's arguably to help with the tone of the book at the time.
Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — WatchAnd because the Lothlorien elves are guided by Galadriel, who has the immortal ennui more than anyone else in Middle-Earth at that point. (Elrond is the only other contender, but he's never seen the Undying Lands, whereas Galadriel is old enough to have seen the light from the Trees - and she knows that her cousins among the Teleri probably still haven't forgiven anyone associated with Feanor for the Kinslaying, even though that was like, twenty thousand years ago. Going "home" has baggage for her. *L*)
edited 30th Dec '11 9:53:10 AM by Aldheim
My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!No ones mentioned the "Deep elves" yet, the ones that lived under ground. I read a series about one of them, he hated their society and went to the surface. They were the complete opposite of most elves. Evil, blood thirsty, back stabbing, Random murderers of children and stuff, ect. ect.
I'm baaaaaaackWell, sure, there's the drow, but for all intents and purposes they're a whole other category of "elf." I guess you could make the argument that now the gradient between "elf" and "drow" is more visible and drow are just the capriciousness of jackass elves taken to its most extreme form.
My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!True enough.
Well, that's my 2 cents. I'm no elfologist.
I'm baaaaaaackThe Drow/Elf division is really just the same sort of division as already existed in folklore, with the Seelie Court (attractive and not actively malevolent towards humans) and Unseelie Court(cruel and actively malevolent toward humans) in Celtic lore and the Lojtalfar (Literally "light elves" — the good guys) and Dokkalfar (Literally, "dark elves", the nasties) in Icelandic and Scandinavian lore.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.Wouldn't it be Alfologist? What with Alf being the original word and stuffs.
Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-Also, the svartalfar in Norse Mythology were nowhere near as big of jerks as the drow are. *L*
My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!Maybe it's an attempt to play around with the Superior Species trope instead of playing it straight?
Elves and dwarfs have always seemed like stereotypical allegories for the two different kinds of working class.
Elves the white collar, intellectual group. Very prim, proper, a bit stuck up making them seem more Jerkass-ish.
While Dwarfs are more blue collar workers, being they may at times be blunt and too the point* , but they're also more willing to relax at the bar.
Rarely active, try DA/Tumblr Avatar by pippanaffie.deviantart.comIt'd be cool to see a "jackass dwarves" race that constantly brags about their metallurgy/technology being second to none. Think of them as the arrogant tech geeks of the fantasy world.
Warhammer has surly, everything-humans-make-is-shit dwarves, does that count?
You are dazzled by my array of very legal documents.Probably.
Warhammer is kind of a World of Jerkass.
My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!Elves the white collar, intellectual group. Very prim, proper, a bit stuck up making them seem more Jerkass-ish.
While Dwarfs are more blue collar workers, being they may at times be blunt and too the point, but they're also more willing to relax at the bar.
Ever read any Neal Stephenson, Vyctorian?
First key to interpreting a work: Things mean things.
I know that TV Tropes is no stranger to this, given our "elf" trope is called Our Elves Are Better (and its sister trope, Can't Argue with Elves) but something struck me earlier tonight.
In 1st through 3rd edition Dungeons And Dragons, elves worshipped, and were embodied in, the god Corellon Larethian, a Chaotic Good deity of nature, archery, magic, and androgyny. In 4th edition, Corellon has become Unaligned (thus, more of a jackass.) Meanwhile, over in Pathfinder, their default elf deity is Calistria, a Chaotic Neutral goddess of carnal lust and retribution. Definitely more jackass than ol' Corellion was.
This is a far cry from Rivendell, folks.
I realize plenty of settings have had jackass elves in the past - Dark Sun is an excellent example - but those settings were generally doing it as a deliberate break from Tolkien Elves and other standard fantasy tropes. These are the default setting elves for the two most popular roleplaying games in the world.
What caused this shift? Is it the influence of Warcraft, where neither of the two elf sects are particularly "good?" The blood elves there are particularly close to the kind of demeanor Calistra typifies, and they're the "traditional" elves in that setting, so maybe that explains it.
My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!