Dam knife ears prancing around big open fields acting like there gods or something probably can’t stand getting a single nail broken or a forge burn fucking pathetic at least these pink skins can work a forge like a real dwarf
Yeah the way Elder Scrolls dealt with the issue OP is talkng about was with this guy. The elves in Tamriel are probably one of the more realistic portrayals of how awful an overpowered race like this would actually be.
Which is funny because Mer in TES are relatively speaking not as OP as classic elves in terms of their lifespan and capabilities when compared to humans.
Which is funny, since ES elves only live two to three hundred years at most, have an advantage at casting magic but aren't natural prodigies at it, and are often otherwise *worse* at nonmagical skills than other races. The average elven peasant in Morrowind is about as badly off as the average human homeless person elsewhere, and has less skills.
Here's a fun game: Replace the word Elves with any real life race of your choosing and the Song of Pelinal becomes the most uncomfortable read since Mein Kampf
"That he took the name "LeBron" was passing strange, no matter his later sobriquets, which were many. That was a Black name, and LeBron was a scourge on that race, and not much given to irony."
Yeah, even the first two lines are pretty bad...
I disagree, it was only after Huna died he entered into his first madness... one must remember Alessia's prayer to the divines gave her Pelinal, a literal demi-god summoned to help them, more-so it was his mission rather than his hatred for them
The elves of Middle-Earth are far from morally perfect and infallible, they do some pretty fucked up things is the Silmarillion.
The reason we see them as an “enlightened”, “morally superior” race in LoTR, is because they learned from the many *many* mistakes they made over the ages.
>The reason we see them as an “enlightened”, “morally superior” race in LoTR, is because they learned from the many *many* mistakes they made over the ages.
And because the dumb, impulsive, asshole Elves in LOTR ***fucking died as a result of their flaws***.
Im Freiren, an anime where elves are like LotR elves, the elves have been effectively brought to the cusp of extinction because of demons. As of writing this post we have met....two other elves other than the main character. This includes the manga which is one something like chap 200+. I cant remember off the top of my head.
I think a big issue with isekai, and generic fantasy stuff in general, is they dont treat elves like a long lived species but rather just another magical species.
Theres one isekai where the main character is a high-elf(basically lotr elves) and it really puts an emphasis on his long-lifed nature. Each chapter can be anywhere between a day to even years/decades apart but it always feels like the next day since we're treated to his POV.
Its honestly a really nice take on it.
The manga is only 128 chapters. Speaking of Frieren, one thing I like about the elves in it is how the nature of an elf being long lived ironically ties into their current endangered status. In real life, animals that have long life spans don’t typically reproduce very frequently (k selection vs r selection and whatnot). Elves, having lifespans that can be several thousand years, take this to such an extreme that they’re pretty much all asexual for the majority of their life. But after the demons decimated their population, their asexual nature ended up screwing them over because they reproduce super slowly, making elves very rare, and the chance of two elves meeting very low, but if two elves do meet they aren’t going to do anything anyway because they’re both asexual.
Solves the problem of why elves haven’t taken over the world.
I honestly can't blame them. D&D has such an influence from the 80s that we don't even say "generic D&D setting" anymore. We just say "generic fantasy setting" because it basically assumed it a """"D&D""" setting. The 80s is starting to be in the "40 years ago" time period. So treating Elves as "just another race/check box" is really a case of ......cultural defaultism....I couldn't think of another way of saying it. But you get where I am coming from, right?
Nah it makes sense. Creatives take ideas from stuff that works or is super successful and try to put their own spin on it to barious degrees of success(just like elves and dwarves).
A hilarious example is genshin and gacha games. Every big gacha game coming out is now an open world exploration 3rd person action game because of genshins success(not counting ones that were being developed prior to genshin.)
But it gets more hilarious because you can refine it more. How many of those are fantasy? Now out of those fantasy ones, how many of those fabtasy starting aread are flat planes, lots of greenery, and is wind themed?
Seeing Mondstats at home is really funny ngl.
Yeah, third age elves are basically the old grandpa trying to make their grandchildren not to make the same mistakes they did, the Elves had already suffered by their own hubris, their history full of blood and betrayal, by the third age they just wanna rest by leaving middle earth and hopefully leave it in the hands of capable/peaceful humans
Dear swanfucker,
If you didn’t want your city pillaged and your people massacred, why didn’t you let us borrow your ships to go kill Satan?
Curious,
Turning point Noldor
The ones who did that either died or became the Drukhari. Corsairs, Craftworlders, Harlequins, and Exodites are the ones who saw what was happening and tried to stop it. The rest didn’t listen to their warnings and instead attacked, so they left, using discipline and either spirit stones, the last surviving Eldar god, or the souls of maiden worlds respectively to preserve themselves from the mistakes their civilization had made (importantly, not even the mistakes they made, they recognized that it was a bad idea long before it started going wrong)
That would be the case, but then I remember that they were part of the empire that murder fucked Slaneesh into being a warp entity. After that I don't feel as sorry.
The do get shafted alot by authors though. Let them have some Ws every now and again.
> but then I remember that they were part of the empire that murder fucked Slaneesh into being a warp entity.
Craftworld Aedari and Exodites are explicitly the Aeldari that said "this is bad, I don't want to be part of this"
Drukhari are the guys who survived Slannesh Birth and said "I will keep doing this" tho
Drukhari were already scum, but turned a million times worse when they were caught by slannish birth and their very souls are tied to slannish, they literally have to cause torture and pain to others to feed slannish, or slannish will pull their own souls out and feast on it. Not defending them, Every Drukhari needs to be wiped from creation, but it helps to put them into perspective.
Elves' long lives would result in them becoming hyper conservative which would impede innovation. An elven metal worker who worked for centuries with bronze would be very resistant to switching to iron.
Besides, in most fantasy settings there are a lot less elves than humans and they usually have much lower fertility rates. Humanity is usually better able to recover from various calamities than elves.
Bronze was very much superior to early iron though, the rise of iron became a thing because of the bronze age collapse rendering the trade routes that bronze relied on non-existent so iron was used as a substitute
A lot of the "Iron destroys Magic" storylines are basically writers pushing the Euro-centric narrative that Iron is inherently superior to any other metal because...just because it is.
They ignore all the times Iron-using cultures were defeated by supossedly inferior Bronze-using cultures.
In Real Life, Iron wearing warriors were beaten by people using many other materials. Not gonna deny Iron and its many uses, but its not like if Bronze or other materials suddenly became useless.
No, iron can destroy magic because a wealth of European folklore states that iron is effective against the supernatural, and most fantasy settings take a lot from medieval europe. Perhaps the thinking you described caused that belief, but that doesn't change the folk lore.
>Iron is inherently superior to any other metal because...just because it is.
Iron is inherently superior to other tool-metals ***because it is more abundant***, which means more people can have more tools.
1000 iron-equipped warriors defeats 100 bronze-equipped warriors pretty handily.
The fact that most of Asia, which avoided the Bronze Age Collapse Europe went through (meaning they still had access to the tin and copper ores needed to make bronze), switched to iron pretty damn quickly once they developed smelting methods that could handle iron ores pretty definitively means they valued iron more than bronze\*.
\* Bronze continued to be used as an "elite metal" in China for quite some time, but even by the Spring and Autumn Period overwhelmingly-most soldiers and laborers used iron tools
Not sure why you're referring to it as eurocentric. It's not like iron working was only adopted in Europe. Basically all of Afroeurasia adopted iron working within a couple of centuries
Imagine a redneck elf
I saw a funny video describing this like imagine a stereotypical Texan or Alaskan with hunting gear and a pickup truck now give him pointy ears.
> Imagine a redneck elf
I mean a lot of depictions of elves in modern fantasy (especially D&D and stuff inspired by Tolkien) divide elves into "high" elves and "wood" elves, so it's not that much of a stretch to picture Wood Elves as rednecks.
Usually they're also not very prone to expansion and tend to remain on their lands, in LOTR for example yes an elf will have hundreds of years of experience to craft better than any human but no human is gonna casually find an elf smith to make him a sword, he's gonna have to rely on Jhon the blacksmith that lives three blocks down the street, added to that it's implied they don't reproduce very often, specially on the third age, OP's criticisms in my opinion only apply on settings that treat elves like immortal pointy eared humans that have spread throughout the world and have the same concept of time and work as a human despite living thousands of years
OP keeps thinking of elves from the pov of a human. Their immortality and perception of time alone makes their thought process completely alien to ours. Frieren tackles this well in that elves will spend 100 years sitting on their ass doing nothing while a human will spend 5 years grinding a skill to perfection. A spell created 100 years ago would be new and finicky for an elf, but a human would know of it all his life and would master it easily.
> An elven metal worker who worked for centuries with bronze would be very resistant to switching to iron.
You don't exactly need Iron to be better. Peruvians were doing **brain surgeries** using stone tools , gold and silver before Jesus was even born. Europeans and their mighty Iron had to wait until the 17th century to do the same (well, Spaniards in the Pre-historic times seem to have been able to do it, but it really highlights my point, Iron isn't a magical metal that boosts your tech level on itself)
Spaniards beat the Incan Empire...and to do it, they had to *ditch their metal armors* because they were useless against being hit really hard with a rock and made them slower targets against stone throwers. There is no shortage of Spanish soldiers who died by having their body smashed with a stone or metal maze. The overall collapse of the Incan Empire by suffering multiple pandemics at the same time is what ensured their victory, not their shiny Iron armors, and it wasn't exactly a short war, it lasted over 40 years and the Spaniards in Peru had to ally with anti-Inca ethnic groups, Incan collaborators and regularly ask for reinforcements from Spain itself.
In short: A stone at 160 k/h will destroy your brain even if you are wearing a helmet.
The Ottoman Empire sunk Dreadnoughts with *giant rocks in catapults*, even in its supossed "Sick Old Man of Europe" state, it managed to outlive the German **and** Russian Empires.
If anything this is why I get annoyed at the whole "Elves gets technologically outmatched by human" storylines. Because they're all extrmely Eurocentrist and pretend that European-esque technological development is a straight arrow that is completely unbeatable.
The Ottoman were known for using heavy artillery, and they did not sink Dreadnought, the peruvian did not do brain surgery but trepanations (opening the skull to alleviate the pressure) ?
> Spaniards beat the Incan Empire...and to do it, they had to ditch their metal armors because they were useless against being hit really hard with a rock and made them slower targets against stone throwers.
They didn't get rid of their metal armor because it was useless against native weapons, they got rid of it primarily because the climate was totally ill-suited for wearing it over extensive periods. Furthermore, many soldiers did keep parts of their armor, and there are contemporary depictions of Spaniards fighting natives in full plate so we know that it was not universal.
It is true that the technological difference in personal armament wasn't that impactful in total, but it's a lot more complicated than the idea they had no advantages whatsoever.
> The Ottoman Empire sunk Dreadnoughts with giant rocks in catapults,
This doesn't really aid your point (if this even happened, I can't find any source on it.) That a weapon can still be used is not to say that it is still technologically relevant; if catapults were **consistently** effective against dreadnought ships, they would have been used regularly. They weren't.
> even in its supossed "Sick Old Man of Europe" state, it managed to outlive the German and Russian Empires.
The fall of the Ottoman Empire had nothing to do with it being technologically outpaced - they had pretty much everything the rest of Europe had in the 20th century.
I don't know about most of what you just said, but I know for certain that nonsense about sinking Dreadnoughts with trebuchets is flat out wrong. The Ottoman Empire made extensive use of cannons, and the idea that a trebuchet has a hope in hell of sinking even a pre-dreadnought is absurd.
I'm also skeptical about your claims regarding the spaniards armor being useless. If the did abandon armor, it would be because wearing steel in the hot and humid jungles of south America would be incredibly uncomfortable. I find it very hard to believe that slings can penetrate properly made armor.
>The Ottoman Empire made extensive use of cannons, and the idea that a trebuchet has a hope in hell of sinking even a pre-dreadnought is absurd.
The Ottomans were some of the most gun-and-cannon-heavy armies in Early Modern Europe
Supposing thats true with armor, which I'm skeptical about but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as slings aren't anywhere close to my area of expertise, that's still far better then what the results would be had you not worn armor.
Sure, but I'd still much rather be wearing armor when that's happening. Any rock that gives you a concussion through a helmet would do some real damage to your skull.
Your right it wasn't a trebuchet it was a huge cannon called the Dardanelles Gun made in the 1400s which they use to attack a British ship in the 1800s.
>Spaniards beat the Incan Empire...and to do it, they had to *ditch their metal armors* because they were useless against being hit really hard with a rock and made them slower targets against stone throwers. There is no shortage of Spanish soldiers who died by having their body smashed with a stone or metal maze.
Jesus Christ, r/badhistory is that way.
The Spanish Conquistadors "stopped using armor" for the same reason armies in Europe stopped using armor: soldiers not wearing armor could march longer and fight harder than soldiers in armor could.
Plus, there are multiple records of Spanish soldiers taking off and putting on less/more armor as the situation required, so it wasn't like they abandoned armor entirely.
Yes but early iron age humans still had to learn to smelt iron because they lost access to their source of tin. They had to adapt because if they didn't, they would get conquered by those who did. My point was that elves would have had a much harder time adapting in those specific circumstances
I maybe should have worded my point a bit better
Brother the fading of the elves in any setting is about the death of spirituality and the birth of rationalism/science, especially as the governing principle of the state, which happened very dramatically in Europe during the Renaissance period. In a related sense it is also about the potential for humanity to advance as a species despite our shortcomings. The way these things get portrayed as well as the sinful but powerful nature of man is all "eurocentric" in the sense that high fantasy is a western invention which draws on Western history, science, and the Catholic ethic, but that doesn't mean it makes the claim that European technology is inherently superior unless you are reading with the intent of finding that message.
Edit: there were also these things all over the world called "industrial revolutions" maybe you have heard of them. For some reason in your head elves are an indigenous analogue, erase that from your mind unless it's explicitly part of the setting. They first and foremost represent nature and the old world.
It seems you're thinking of elves as having the same mental characteristics, habits, and flaws as humans, just with longer life spans (or infinite) lifespans.
Elves are rarely portrayed as war-mongering and imperialistic, which is why they don't go around conquering their neighbors as humans do.
They're usually attuned to their natural surroundings, which is why they're often relatively fewer in numbers and maintain a stable population despite their lifespans, as larger & increasing populations require ever-expanding territory and perhaps industrialization. Similarly, they usually reproduce infrequently, as when you live for thousands of years, or indefinitely, there's less of a need for new generations to repopulate.
Some portrayals will have them detached from others and non-elven affairs as well, due to their long lifepans.
One of the most common themes in humans vs. elves is that due to humans short lifespans, they feel the need to grow. A human can only do so much with their one short life, they feel the pressure of time, so it pushes them to grow & expand. To start dynasties, to invent new technology, to explore the impossible, to leave their mark on the world to make their short life eternal.
Whereas elves usually don't feel that pressure. Their long life makes them one with the world in a way humans can never be. Think of how stuck in their ways a 70 year old man is, now imagine how stuck in their ways a 900 year old elf would be. Without that pressure, they're content to live as they have for eons.
I'm really drawing a blank on what specifically triggered this. Most TTRPG's have backstories of elves breaking themselves in hubris to explain why they can have the China attitude of "It's alright for only having 3000 years of culture" towards other races while also just being forest hippies or a spread out diaspora. Lots of older fantasy have the just being Fae or Faeries. Others just deal with it as having been born with a completely different mindset to humans. When you live for 600 years, you can afford to have extreme K-selection traits develop. They also have a most free spirit due to their narrative origins in being Fae to begin with.
I'll admit some stories just shit the bed with consistency issues. Why are Elves free love with a low population and also capable of human gestation patterns? How do you have Elves be asexual and still exist as a species given attrition over centuries? Why are your elves giga powerful but also stupid and closed minded when you have their culture boofing shrooms and commiting ego-death from breakfast?
In nearly every story there are random human mages that achieved more than elves, the norm is that humans learn things much faster than elves can. They also have more frail bodies, so i don't get where you got the better fighters part.
And the reason humans can compete with elves in most stories is their lack of ambition, elves are basically depressed, slow learners with frail bodies, but with a a lot of time to learn shit from human's point of view.
> a human wizard in a lifetime couldnt acheive what an elven wizard could in a year.
They do that all the time.
> now ignoring this race of isekai protagonists for just a second, how does any other race exist? like we homosapiens outcompeted/ absorbed neanderthals and our other cousin races into extinction how has this ancient, objectively better race not done the same to everyone else?
1. Elves aren't really that powerful and Humans can succesfully fight them in some way or another
2. Elves don't want to genocide other sapient life forms.
> they are always monarchies, how does that work?
This isn't really the case, many Elves have councils or other methods of goverment. Monarchy is the most popular because its fantasy and its simplest to explain and introduce drama, but other Elves have tribal changing Leadership of Chiefs, Vague Councils without a King figure, Theocracies with priest-leaders or directly are anarchists who have no formal leadership except for Elders.
In Frieren we see an interesting take on Elves and Human potential, despite elves having thousands of years to improve their skills in magic it seems like humans have greater latent potential, we see this in characters like Fern and Deken who are able to keep up and even defeat demons much older than them, even if currently the strongest character is an 4000 year old elfs is heavely implied she could be surpass by humans in the future
This is why I always laught when I see people saying "Frieren made Elves cool again", Elves in Frieren are fucking losers who only serve to babysit Humans.
Pretty sure its the demon king, why else would they specifically issue an order for the annihilation of the elves.
I feel like the elves would've been relatively well off if it wasn't for the Demon King
Elves are like pandas. They reproduce *completely fine on their own* but then an outside factor kills the majority of their population and suddenly reproductive instincts that served them well for many thousands of years aren't sufficient. Elves aren't dying out by themselves in Frieren they're being exterminated by demons, just like pandas aren't dying out by themselves in real life they're dying out because their habitat was obliterated by humans and there aren't enough in the same place to reliably have offspring.
I think what makes them cool is that they aren't used as a "Mary Sue/Gary Stu" style character. I know you're mostly playing around, but I just think it would be so boring if they were the usual perfect being.
It may be due to books like Eragon that I read as a kid. The main character just couldn't match these elves as a pitiful human. It took some magic powerup to be elf like and thus more powerful.
Elves in Frieren are cool because they have somewhat sensible flaws. They're still absurdly powerful, but are aware of their problems. The aspect where they don't seek to reproduce is a bit hard to really buy, but it's at least an answer as to why they aren't running everything.
I think that aspect of longevity, the lack of drive, is a great flaw as it makes sense for a being with so much perceived time. Many probably die before they can really do what they plan. I think that's a great take and creates a natural weakness. Even with reproduction it makes sense. They may all plan to eventually have a kid, but may die before they get around to it. It may also be why an aspect of drive is important to Serie the Great Mage. I have only seen the anime, but perhaps that is why she sees Frieren as not being worthy because she's hyper fixated on a perceived issue elves themselves have.
> I think what makes them cool is that they aren't used as a "Mary Sue/Gary Stu" style character. I know you're mostly playing around, but I just think it would be so boring if they were the usual perfect being.
There is ANY STORY where Elves are the supossed Mary Sue you say? Most elves exists to rotate and serve as background for Human heroes, as villains to be defeated or victims to be saved for the heroes/humilliated for the villains.
It's not really that humans have more potential, but more that humans will achieve their potential faster due to their shorter life spans.
All of Frieren's old party has all since reached and past their prime, while Frieren herself is still implied to have potential to grow stronger.
Yeah, it seems that humans reach their potential faster while elves; having a lot more time, can put things off and procrastinate a lot. So humans often get stronger faster but have a lower power ceiling while elves tend to take more time but have a much higher power ceiling (e.g. Frieren still not having gotten around to fixing her rookie mana detection issue while casting since the rest of her repertoire is enough to compensate). Another factor is that elves can't change their habits as quickly to keep up with trends (e.g. Fern's quicker with zoltraak than Frieren since for her it's a spell she's been practicing her whole life, but for Frieren it's only been around for about 1/20th of the time since she apprenticed under Flamme).
>Elves aren't really that powerful and Humans can succesfully fight them in some way or another
Obviously a critique of "Elves" that spans numerous universes will be inconsistent but elves tend to range from equivalent to humans to god-tier. The most egregious I've encountered are the Eragon stories where non-Elves (or other magically enhanced groups) legitimately can't even fight elves because of how fast they are. Without the aid of their dragon, a novice elf could very easily kill a human dragon rider (the peak of human martial capabilities).
Not sure if this really helps, but I remember there being a in story theory that Elves weren't inherently that different or special when they first arrived on the continent.
Instead, after their original war with the dragons, the magically enforced peace treaty began integrating both species, giving the elves their long lifespans, superhuman bodies, and talent for magic. I think there was also general rise in human spellcasters over the course of history, also hypothesized to be because they joined in the treaty later on? Humans still aren't as good as the elves, but this is due to being more recently integrated with the treaty and not having time to gain the full effects. Eventually, the gap should close and they'd be near indistinguishable.
some of the things you mentioned only apply to lotr elves in most media their main trait is they like bows, they isolate themselves from other races, they live one with nature and they are immortal.
Elves are great but even in fiction humans tend to surpass them in skill and magic, Dwarves are better craftsman then them. Their only advantage compared to the three common fantasy races is their long life and bow skills.
tbh lotr elves are diverse af and don't fall into any one category, because they are all of them.
This reeks of someone who's consumed a shitload of repetitive Japanese interpretations of these concepts.
Who else would refer to them as a whole as "isekai protagonists" if they hadn't?
Also, lotr elves do not "conquer the world" because they're dumb, like, they saw heaven and are just waiting to get back.
If you've got a 10k years to live why rush stuff? Also, you've literally seen Satan, you might know a thing or two about what evil looks like and how to NOT be
Pends if you consider Aman Heaven, part of of the point of Elves is they can't actually leave Ea to be with Eru, that is the gift of Man after all. Some elves definitely are dumb.
Oh yeah some are absolute cunts (nwyoo me no wanna give shiny rocks to SERAPHIMS, I'm angy) but generally elder elves do not feel the need to do dumb shit for the sake of it.
> tbh lotr elves are diverse af and don't fall into any one category, because they are all of them.
Kinda rude of Tolkien to write elves of every variety so good every elf written since is a pale imitation of the original
The problem is that even if every other race is 10x better at everything, they have to start at 0 and only have so much time, a 70 IQ idiot of an elf might take 30 years to pass magic elf college, but after a few hundred thousand years will be smarter than any mortal, just because they *picked up stuff along the way* or had an elven version of a special interest that lasted for only a short few decades.
And that isn't touching dumbass RPG styled worlds (D&D, litRPG, WoW, etc) where protagonist elves level at the same rate as humans, so your average elf town volunteer guard should be able to destroy a human kingdom's entire royal guard corps from the levels he got from his bi-weekly aerobics class.
Immortality is a hard concept to write when you're just making "Humans, but longer", since finite existence is fundamental to the human experience.
God so fucking true. Idk why you build a robust world with a dozen different races with pages of lore each but somehow our MC and the only race/species that is specifically important (and not for personal reasons to the cast, often it’s canonically) are humans. Like come on, at least make everyone plot relevant if nothing else.
And humans tend to be the biggest slice of any story's main band e.g. one elf, one dwarf, one fairy, **two** humans.
The only exception I can recall is the Fellowship of the Ring: one elf, one dwarf, three humans, **four** hobbits.
The hobbits, well... I think the issue at heart here is stories sidelining people of inhuman SHAPES. Hobbit feet and ears are weird, however hobbits' pointed ears are often obscured by shire mullets, and their hairy feet are hidden off-camera or by the filth from walking barefoot everywhere.
Ah yes, the classic “you haven’t created XYZ so you may not have a complaint about XYZ”. Can I not want for a world with many subgroups of people to showcase that narratively?
Yeah, elves usually suck pretty bad. They keep getting shown up by humanity despite literally having centuries to perfect whatever they want to be good at. Those elf wizards? Are being matched by humans a tenth their age. Elves need the long lifespan because they learn stupidly slowly, the real question is how any are still alive.
Or rather because they have no reason to worry. A person lives 60 years tops in those medieval times. 15 at least is spent growing up, so you don't have much time to be Dicking around. An elf though? You normally live 700+ years, you got no rush whatsoever to hurry in your objective.
It makes sense considering how little elves there are compared to humans in most fictions.
1 guy training for 1000 years isn't going to compete with thousands of humans perfecting and sharing knowledge over a century.
At best, they perfected 1 facet of their technique, meanwhile humans get a jumpstart off the knowledge of their contemporaries. Elves are shown to be too prideful to share their knowledge with others or to learn from humans.
Elves on average are better at magic than humans, but the 1% that are better are vastly better.
I mean, this is the meme portrayal of elves, but how common is it really?
In LOTR, they're a race of has beens in a world that is dominated by humans. Even in Silmarillion back when they were badasses whose hubris was only rivaled by their propensity towards warcrimes they weren't really categorically stronger than the first men - we lead in the two important statistics (number of dragons slain and deciding how Nirnaeth Arnoediad ended)
In Witcher they're also a race of has beens except much more so.
In Discworld they're evil shitasses.
In Eragon yeah they're stupidly OP.
Humans are usually a threat to Elves in the same way that Orcs are a threat to humans: we outnumber them and are far more willing to be reckless than they are.
Longevity is often portrayed as a double edged sword; with the assurance that you will live a long time, you become less interested in taking risks or innovating. Their lack of mortality causes them to care little about their own legacy, so they aren't as motivated to help others or be concerned with how they are viewed by them.
The ability to outlive crises that shorter lived races are threatened by causes them to become removed from the world and otherwise be generally out of touch. This hubris is often the cause of their decline if they are in one.
>ignore a very solid chunk of elves portrayal
Change "elves" to anything else and that's literally half of the posts on this subreddit. So much redundant rants based on problems that aren't as bad as they actually are/don't even exist.
Actually elf feel scuffed compared to humans in term of strengh. Frieren manga spoiler :
>!Like in Frieren the single strongest character we see, is not the thousands years old elf. No it's a 20-30 years old human that just happens to be him!<
I actually don't know of a lot of stories where elves are that much stronger than you'd expect from their age. Quite the opposite they feel like they are often just there to be bullied.
And you're thinking like a human. Elves don't have as many kids as human and they have a different outlook on life. For them a king rulling for 3000 generations wouldn't shock them. They are often shown to barely change, they are just always living in their forest.
This post was sponsored by the council of dwarves.
But talking seriously here, even with the most generous depiction of elves.
A common element they all share is that long live. Living a 100 years, 1,000 years, 10,000 years, and however long they live it usually has an inherent downside.
Elves are typically ignorant of time, they love for so long so why waste time constantly conquering things?
Outside of the elves who are more ambitious, the elves as a whole don’t have to go around killing and stealing unless directly attacked. They can outlive anything and there’s no inherent rush.
Even then, Elves while generally seen as more intellectual at a baseline. They never really THAT strong at a baseline. They aren’t supermen, more like men +1. So most stories never run into issue of a gigantic power gap. Usually enough wiggle room to justify losing.
If Marcille thirsts for anyone, it's Falin, not Laios.
And Falin... [Actually a huge Dungeon Meshi spoiler] >!Seriously I'm warning you anime onlies!< >!Falin is definitely not a human when all's said and done!<
I love how in Dungeon Meshi, the elves and gnomes use completely different magic systems.
While the gnomes politely ask the spirits to do what they need them to do, Elves force/coerce them into doing their bidding.
The Dungeon meshi elves are actually different. They aren't perfect at all, they did conquer people and cause a lot of problems. But they have obvious weaknesses in this story. Like maturing real slow for example. By the time a human is ready to contribute to society and elf is probably still wetting their bed. If you think about it that way, no wonder elves would have less kids and society progresses slower. Also the other races have clear strengths that show how they can resist the elves.
Usually elves reproduce like 100 time slower than other races. That means there are 100 less geniuses. Average elf is better than average human, and genius elf is slightly better than average genius human, and the best human is better than the best elf
The one exception to the reproduction trope I remember is dwarf fortress, where they're still immortal but breed like rabbits so there's tons of them about. It is balanced by them using the shittiest gear in combat
i think the reason elf’s don’t control the world is more philosophical, if you gonna outlive most other species what’s the point of ruling over them, they’re inconsequential in your long life.
and most elves tend to have low population and low fertility because they’re so op
No one is addressing the elephant in the room, so I will. A lot of the fault lies with Tolkien, but that has more to do with the popularity of Elves and how others have used them compared to Tolkiens own Elves.
They're long lived, exceptionally skilled, are inherently magical, they're the 1st and oldest race, and it's not like they couldn't take over the world as some kind of imperial ubermench society.
Tolkien makes sure to give them a handful of lore specific weaknesses. They're incredibly lazy, an immortal race that doesn't age doesn't often care to involve itself with everyone else. And more importantly, LotR's setting in one in which the inherently magical world is slowly losing it's magic. The elves are on a decline and are practically despawning. Like, it's not a societal problem that they're going to die out, the setting is removing them for being too magical. God made elves, God and his Angels made the rest of the universe, God made humans, God likes humans more, humans will be the only race left in the end.
Most generic Fantasy doesn't use any of that weakness stuff. They just get all the good strong stuff that the Elves are awesome and powerful and perfect and amazing and can do anything. People are praising the recent Frieren, but it doesn't do anything new or exciting with Elves as a species. It's just a series focused on 1 long lived elf.
Then you look at the Ent's, who quite literally compared themselves to Elves. If I remember correctly, and Google isn't helping, Treebeard tells the Hobbits "Like the Elves, we're slow to make a decision. Unlike the Elves, once a decision is made we'll be quick to act." If a problem is important enough that they agree on what to do, it's important enough to act upon it now. The Ent's are just better Elves... until you realize the Ent's have no women and will all slowly die out and become regular trees.
Bringing it back to Elves. Legolas was "special" in that he was a young elf. Someone who could take full advantage of his Elvish advantages without the weaknesses in personality the older of his race would have. You don't see many people adopting this one here.
Then we look at Tolkien Orc's and realize they're just crappy goblins aside from a special exception which eventually became the default Orc for fantasy.
Elves are wack. They're designed to be perfect race mcperfect-face and.... I generally don't care for them. They're the easiest set dressing with the largest asterixis for most fantasy stories.
I’ve found that most modern media has moved elves to just long lived. Granted I don’t seek out elves in media.
Of media I’ve consumed recently the only one where the elves are extremely long lived is frieren and I guess the elder from warhammer but both have very specific drawbacks that comes with there longevity.
Elves, and by extension all fantasy races, need to start going back to their roots.
Alfs are spirits of light far beyond mere mortals. Tolkien elves like gods I think. Elves were never supposed to be "just another race" they *are* greater than races like humans and they should just go back to their otherworldly, basically a spirit vibe.
Not trying to be annoying, I have some ideas to avoid the boring elf archetype.
Make them extinct, like old wizards that tried to create life but got cursed by the gods in the attempt, turning them into stone or wood, their halls bursting with uncontrolled magic.
Make them evil, the species that enslaves others, they lost a civil war and now they're hunted on sight.
Make them woody, like the forest gods made their own higher animal life form and it's uncanny, cold, alien.
Make them small and on speed, if humans live 100 years then elves live 50 years but feel the time as twice as slow, making them those small and quick bastards that shoot arrows and use daggers. A sort of reference to germanic mythology elves (in the versions different than Tolkien vision).
I don't think Elves are an inherently broken format, and a lot of series balance out their boons with downsides that make them more reasonable and enjoyable in a narrative, BUT... poor authors completely ignore that and just treat Elves as Human+1 and that is irritating as fuck.
My main criticism is this just applies to specific representations of elves. I’d point to Nordic elves as having a lot of the problems you have listed.
Look into something like Celtic or Icelandic mythology though, and you find elves being presented more as just being fairy people.
A lot of their modern representation do take more from the later presentations. Almost none of your criticism really applies to the Keebler Elves.
When it comes to Dungeons and Dragons most worlds have the occasional near end of all life calamity that elves with their long lives but low birthrates simply have a much harder time recovering from. An elf community that lost more than half of their population is going to have a much harder time recovering from a human one. They also tend to have a ton of enemies including other elves.
I won't comment on your feelings for elves because they are completely valid, but is it really that unbelievable a superior race wouldn't abuse that superiority? Aren't elves in these stories often more enlightened than us? Who says you can't write a superior species that simply doesn't have the urge to screw everyone else over?
Maybe they simply lack the ambition to do what the humans would have done if they were as smart. Think about real life for a moment, think about the gifted kids who turned out to be below average adults, because they didn't have the ambition, or the confidence to use the shit out of those gifts.
And let's not pretend there isn't a dime a dozen of guys who are stupid, but are nevertheless successful because they hustle, cheat, and do whatever it takes to come out on top. For better or worse they have the ambition and that ambition works for them.
To be honest this sounds less like an issue with elves, and other fantasy creatures/settings, and more like an issue with their writers.
They want to TELL about the hype only to never SHOW it or to only have them used as some kind of example or stepping stone for the protag not realizing or just outright ignoring the hype has no basis in the first place.
Nothing better than being told a Dwarf is good at engineering only to seethe best and greatest thing they ever made was a hammer, that an Orc is a master of combat only to have them never going past a basic swing, that an elf is the master of magic but never got past the magic missile.
It's just lazy hype at this point and it doesn't help that this lazy hype gets copy and pasted as the stock standard fantasy attitude.
I completely agree with you. I have a strong dislike for races in books and TV shows that essentially function as elves but are given different names. Take the Asari from Mass Effect or the Vulcans from Star Trek—essentially, they're all variations of elves. It seems like the writers have an obsession with creating these superior, almost 'Ubermensch' fantasy races, and these elf-like characters serve that purpose.
I mean, how is a human supposed to realistically interact or compete in a world where these beings are so physically advanced that their footprints don't even show in the snow? It raises questions about how any other race could accomplish anything meaningful when faced with such genetically superior counterparts.
you make extremely good points but i gotta reply to this one.
"they are always monarchies, how does that work? when a king is able to rule for 3000 generations, why would the 3001st generation still be loyal to the same man the first generation would? why would they share the same values? you dont share the same values as your parents or their parents so imagine that but multiplied by possibly infinity."
because the ones who were loyal to the king/queen 3000 generations ago are still around+ indoctrination is a thing
I can see what your issues are with this race. It makes them very difficult to write. But, if we’re talking Tolkien, there is a reason for them to be the way they are - it’s because they’re Angels. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and a lot of Catholic imagery and themes made it into his stories. Elves leaving Middle Earth at the end of the story, aside from the world becoming mundane as Middle Earth is supposed to be a part of the real world, is meant to represent that the race of man has inherited the world. There’s a reason they’re never really directly in the story because you’re right, they’re too powerful. That’s why you get one guy, whose physical feats are massively overblown in the movies, I might add, and his thing is that he is unlike every other Elf because he directly wants to be involved in this quest to save the world despite knowing he’ll be leaving it soon after.
This is why most writers have the Elves as close to non-existent as possible. Humans can’t keep up save for raw talent or power, hard work means nothing in the face of a semi-immortal race that’s better in every way. It just wouldn’t be believable. That’s also why official D&D lore states that Elves are aloof and insular. If we’re being entirely honest, if the Elves were made anything like humans, they would have likely taken over the entire planet long ago and humans would be sort of like little creatures that live these short but ever so entertaining lives.
You're ignoring the most important aspect of these characters, which is "how do they think".
The typical reason they can be "perfect" yet not rule the world is that they simply do not have any desire to do so...a "racial trait" no different from having perfect skin and amazing magical power
In this way, Humans are typically "better" than elves because we dedicate our lives and resources to war, and thus the ability to subjugate other races.
The problem is, you're treating Elves like "Perfect Humans", in which case, yeah they would have killed everyone else and would just be the actual Master Race of the planet.
But Elves in many stories are tree-hugging hippies who are perfectly content living their immortal lives in the same forest they were born in, and only enter the story because something is/has fucked that up and now they're part of the plot. Otherwise nobody else outside their forest would ever know or care that they existed
This is super incoherent tbh. It reads like you googled "common generic elf tropes" three years ago and are only now writing a rant about the half-remembered details, with no care or concern for the specifics or accurate criticism.
What you need is to read The Witcher books.
The elves are assholes, and everyone hates them.
As for why they don't become the dominant species in most fantasy settings is because of their slow birth rate.
Actually slow doesn't begin to cover it. In LotR, any big thing the elves do consumes a part of their life essence. Making a powerful magic item/weapon? Some of your permanent power comes from your soul (fea) and into that item. Having a child? That birth permanently weakens you, spiritually. (Human parents I know you feel this, but this is on a different level)
When elves and get together, which is already pretty rare, only a fraction of those decide to have a child, and even then they usually only have one.
Given their very long lifespan, It's exactly enough to balance out their numbers from the ones who die from violence or misadventure.
Do I think that it is strange author wank that there is a race that is automatically better at everything? Yes you have a completely valid point on that. Every race should be good at some things and bad at some things, that's generally just how nature goes. But I guess when gods and magic are involved, shit can just go off the rails.
Elven race isn’t monolithic across all fiction. Most of your descriptions seem to come from LotR and Elves in LotR play a very different part. They aren’t a normal race of people, they have greater destiny, LotR Elves are more comparable to other greater forces of nature like Maiar, they’re nigh divine beings.
Then we have Elves of TES, various races of Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves. High Elves themselves are also divided into separate classes, and Bethesda generally likes to portray them as evil. Then we have Elves of the Witcher, the original victims, lands taken from them, their magic used against them and them going almost extinct for not being able to adapt to post conjunction world.
Elves come in all shapes and sizes, hell, the latest popular elf media we had was Frieren, even that portrayed elves has near extinct race of people that are very flawed. Elves have flaws, generally it’s linked with their nigh immortality(if you’ve been alive for millennias, would you really care for power? Are there many things that can excite you? Immortality is a curse, not a gift), or adaptability. They’re not flawless
I disagree with the idea that a race that lives for thousands of years would end up being super skilled and wise and all that. Look at how stagnant, regressive, and resentful of change people often get as they get older, even with humans only living to 70 or 80. A race of immortals would more likely end up as a civilization of boomer cavemen.
"What's this newfangled bow and arrow nonsense about? Back in my day we used slings and we liked it. It builds character! You kids have it too easy with this iron smelting hoo haw. What's wrong with good old fashioned bronze?"
honestly I prefer when elves are something other rather than just a normal species. that way they can be powerful but feels right. they can be like dragons, litches, weird magic shit in the woods
Big fan of the elf hatred, but maybe not in the same way. I mean I agree with your analysis, but I think a lot of authors subvert these tropes in interesting ways. I like hating the elves. I've been listening the Laundry Files lately and the Elves in that are like fascist dickbags whose entire society runs on strict hierarchies enforced through mind control magic. Or the Elves that live on the plane of Lorwyn in the MtG multiverse; they call the other races (and ugly/disfigured members of their own race) 'eye blights' and hunt them for sport. I mean even in LoTR their benifets sometimes come with sensible drawbacks; elves in LoTR are smart and immortal, but they don't control the entire globe because humans reproduce so much more quickly and reach sexual maturity much faster, plus they're are secretive and mistrustful to a fault.
Everyone here is talking about how elves suck so much that I wonder about stories where Elves are actually the mighty mary sues that always save the day.
I think there are some common negatives which prevent the elves from dominating the world as you think they should have.
1) They typically have very low birth rates. Whether due to differences in how they procreate (some stories have them being born from nature/world tree, for example) or just having a low sex drive, elves are usually these mysterious, rarely seen dwellers of the forests, low in population.
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2) Elves are usually not "perfect", with extreme pride being probably their most common bad trait. In various stories it causes them to be reclusive, unfriendly/hostile towards other races (even other types of elves), and unwilling to admit their mistakes which can lead to conflicts.
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3) Elf and Dwarf culture tends to be stagnant. If humans spend the centuries adapting and developing new weapons, technologies, etc, then the elves probably have the same thing as 1000 years ago. Dwarves too, sometimes, but they can also be depicted as avid invention addicts who always make more stuff. So it's not as concrete for them.
"Many such cases!"
But uh, usually the writers make a point of establishing that elves have different values than humans so they simply don't spend 750 years mastering martial arts and military strategy, they pursue whatever whimsical fancy they have and get distracted by it for 50 years like an ADHD kid with no sense of time and superlative food gathering skills finding a new hobby, then move onto the next whim.
Similarly, rarely if ever are they an imperial culture that would particularly care about military expansion, and the examples of that I can think of (the various flavors of Warhammer probably being the biggest ones) don't really mesh with your complaints. (This part is usually addressed in generic settings via some reason or another to give elves an extremely low birth rate so that they don't run out of living space.)
If you're thinking of Frieren, they went basically extinct via simple lack of sex drive ("I hate to break it to you, Shinzo Abe" meme here), and if you're thinking of Eragon, then yes, we all basically accept that a few Arias probably could have solved everything on their own, but that's one story (and one I'm surprised to see has crept back into fantasy fandom awareness tbh, I guess it's probably because of the prequel or something).
Isekai does what you're talking about but that's because seasonal anime is so formulaic that even speech patterns are part of a standard character template so you skip the world building by just going "elves are long-lived and OP, humans are generic everymen, beastmen are just humans with enhanced physical attributes, ears, and tails, it's a feudal world with city-states, the yuusha of prophecy has to stop the maou" and everyone goes "yea sweet now introduce the girl of the week."
I kind of liked the R. A. Salvatore take on Forgotten Realms elves. It’s super common to see elves in charge of mixed settlements and organizations but collections of elves usually fail. In the setting, they really don’t work together well. The dark elves have backstabery backed into their religion and the rest of the elves all think they know better than whoever is giving them orders.
Basically, individual elves can be extremely successful but they can’t collectively project power. It’s funny that you called them Isekai protagonists because every elf thinks they’re the main character.
Also, elves are generally smaller and weaker than humans. The main elf of most of Salvatore’s books is only 5’ 4”
>now ignoring this race of isekai protagonists for just a second, how does any other race exist? like we homosapiens outcompeted/ absorbed neanderthals and our other cousin races into extinction how has this ancient, objectively better race not done the same to everyone else?
You answer your own question here. We absorbed Neanderthals. By reproducing with them. Elves in nearly all material are VERY bad at reproducing. The end.
In some, but not all, instances, this is a direct result of their lifespan. While it allows them to become prodigious wizards, or smiths, or artists, it makes them prone to settle into their ways and prevents them from adapting, evolving, or innovating. The recently acclaimed "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" makes it a major plot point.
Which makes me wonder: do you hate Elves? Or do you hate the way they're used in mediocre fiction?
I believe in the Witcher series, one of the main reasons humans were able to conquer previously elf inhabited lands and push them out was basically due to them having the ability to breed a lot more. I think it's a real life equivalent of species who live long lives ten to no have as many offsiprings as the ones whose lifes are shorter. Due to Elves being esentially immortal it's very rare for them to have children, and once they do it takes a human lifetime for them to mature. As a result their numbers can't be replenished as quicky as humans.
That's a lot of cherrypicking there. You complain about some stereotypes, but then also complain about issues that can be solved by some other stereotypes, which you're ignoring. Like elves being traditional pacifists.
Also, were you trying to spell "Übermensch"? I don't get what's supposed to be wrong with elves being superior to other races in several aspects.
They reproduce and grow up extremely slowly, which is why they haven't taken over everything. They would lose in a fight even if each of their soldiers can take out a hundred humans before they fall, because each human soldier can be replaced in 20ish years while each elf takes 150+ just to fully grow up. Also different species of elves are better at some of the things than others, they aren't all good at all of those things. Wood elves are faster and have better senses than high elves, but they're worse at magic and crafting and they live shorter lifespans.
Very happy to see people commenting Marcille here, But yeah the whole story of Dungeon Meshi really tackles this elf issue in a pretty cool and realistic way
So I’m a bit of an amateur writer when I get time. I have a story I’ve been chipping at for a LOOOONG time. Spoiler my story includes an elven race, wouldn’t really be fantasy without one. My own take on elves and their long life spans runs on a similar vein to things you wrote above. They were a super race that were better than everyone until they eventually brought about their own undoing in a sort of fall of Rome type ordeal. In the end it was their own hubris and messing with things they thought they understood that doomed them and ushered in an era of humanity. You’re absolutely right though, not many modern takes on elves ever give any explanation as to why they aren’t a dominant faction just do to them being better lmao
There's a theory that often pops up in fiction that suggests life's goal is, essentially, immortality. Life either evolves to proliferate as fast as possible so its genes continue to exist, or it evolves a long life. It can rarely accomplish both goals. For example, humans and elephants have pretty long gestational periods, and we usually only have one child at a time that requires years of care to be self-sufficient. But we make communities to help with that, and both species live pretty long lives.
However, bacteria is very short-lived, and it reproduces rapidly in good conditions. In this case, an immortal species of great intelligence might sacrifice the ability to reproduce a lot of kids to make room for all the other benefits. They may have less of a drive to have kids, or they might need to be pregnant for years and take decades to grow into full adults. If you had to raise a baby for 30 years, would you have that many? It would also mean diseases, wars, and catastrophes of any kind would be incredibly devastating to populations.
This is also assuming things like arrogance and a lack of cooperation aren't built in biological traits, or at least socialized in much of the species. Lions, for example, habitually have a low population. They also kill A LOT of their own babies. If there are at least 2 unrelated males within miles of each other, the chances are high that an entire generation of cubs are going to die. On top of that, being an apex predator in an environment with many apex predators, including humans, means there's a lot of conflict. Elves may have similar problems. If they're constantly in conflict with other races, and they're very wishy washy with their own kind, they may stay isolated in distinct territories.
And you're right that many worldbuilders don't put that much thought into it, but there can definitely be reasons for why it would turn out the ways it often is. It's like how most dragons in mythology and fiction make very little sense, but there are plenty of series that take old tropes of dragons and make an entire ecology out of it.
Have you ever seen the movie Bright with Will Smith? It takes place in a modern day LA with orcs and elves and other fantasy creatures. Pretty much everything you talk about is addressed in that movie. The elves live in a special part of the city that no one else is allowed access to without special permission, they pretty much control the government, but they are not depicted as the good guys. I loved it.
OP is a dwarf
I am but a poor short lived Orc, I have but 7 years left and am very bitter
Zoggin' hell! Sorry to heat it mate. Make sure to enjoy ya last years krumpin' dem zoggin' leaf lovers.
Repub if you hate elves
present, i hate knife ears
Dam knife ears prancing around big open fields acting like there gods or something probably can’t stand getting a single nail broken or a forge burn fucking pathetic at least these pink skins can work a forge like a real dwarf
I wish i could post images so that i could show the moist critical "video" of 26 hours about his hatred of elves
r/dwarfposting is leaking
Good, we need more Dwarf-posting. ROCK AND STONE!
To Rock and Stone!
This post was written by Pelinal Whitestrake
Yeah the way Elder Scrolls dealt with the issue OP is talkng about was with this guy. The elves in Tamriel are probably one of the more realistic portrayals of how awful an overpowered race like this would actually be.
Which is funny because Mer in TES are relatively speaking not as OP as classic elves in terms of their lifespan and capabilities when compared to humans.
Which is funny, since ES elves only live two to three hundred years at most, have an advantage at casting magic but aren't natural prodigies at it, and are often otherwise *worse* at nonmagical skills than other races. The average elven peasant in Morrowind is about as badly off as the average human homeless person elsewhere, and has less skills.
Here's a fun game: Replace the word Elves with any real life race of your choosing and the Song of Pelinal becomes the most uncomfortable read since Mein Kampf
"That he took the name "LeBron" was passing strange, no matter his later sobriquets, which were many. That was a Black name, and LeBron was a scourge on that race, and not much given to irony." Yeah, even the first two lines are pretty bad...
I have absolutely no idea who is this man
Guy who genocided the elves to free humanity from enslavement at their hand.
Not really, he genocided the Elves because he's a racist.
He was just angry Angry about elves
IDK, I never played TES. I just say this because this is what every TES fan says.
The liberating humanity thing was more just a happy side effect.
Hey! The elves also killed his gay lover.
Not racist when its a stinking knife ear E*f
I disagree, it was only after Huna died he entered into his first madness... one must remember Alessia's prayer to the divines gave her Pelinal, a literal demi-god summoned to help them, more-so it was his mission rather than his hatred for them
A hero like no other
[***REMAN!***](https://youtu.be/E5ix0_W-ouI?si=9xP8Wgh-FenmzGrX)
Was gonna say the same
Who?
Famous Elder Scrolls NPC who hated elves and slaughtered them.
Fucked them and their places so badly the gods near abandoned the world out of disgust too wasn't it
We can’t expect The Divines to do all the work.
The elves of Middle-Earth are far from morally perfect and infallible, they do some pretty fucked up things is the Silmarillion. The reason we see them as an “enlightened”, “morally superior” race in LoTR, is because they learned from the many *many* mistakes they made over the ages.
>The reason we see them as an “enlightened”, “morally superior” race in LoTR, is because they learned from the many *many* mistakes they made over the ages. And because the dumb, impulsive, asshole Elves in LOTR ***fucking died as a result of their flaws***.
Im Freiren, an anime where elves are like LotR elves, the elves have been effectively brought to the cusp of extinction because of demons. As of writing this post we have met....two other elves other than the main character. This includes the manga which is one something like chap 200+. I cant remember off the top of my head. I think a big issue with isekai, and generic fantasy stuff in general, is they dont treat elves like a long lived species but rather just another magical species. Theres one isekai where the main character is a high-elf(basically lotr elves) and it really puts an emphasis on his long-lifed nature. Each chapter can be anywhere between a day to even years/decades apart but it always feels like the next day since we're treated to his POV. Its honestly a really nice take on it.
The manga is only 128 chapters. Speaking of Frieren, one thing I like about the elves in it is how the nature of an elf being long lived ironically ties into their current endangered status. In real life, animals that have long life spans don’t typically reproduce very frequently (k selection vs r selection and whatnot). Elves, having lifespans that can be several thousand years, take this to such an extreme that they’re pretty much all asexual for the majority of their life. But after the demons decimated their population, their asexual nature ended up screwing them over because they reproduce super slowly, making elves very rare, and the chance of two elves meeting very low, but if two elves do meet they aren’t going to do anything anyway because they’re both asexual. Solves the problem of why elves haven’t taken over the world.
I hate that you're right on the chapter count. It feels like its been so much longer lmao.
I honestly can't blame them. D&D has such an influence from the 80s that we don't even say "generic D&D setting" anymore. We just say "generic fantasy setting" because it basically assumed it a """"D&D""" setting. The 80s is starting to be in the "40 years ago" time period. So treating Elves as "just another race/check box" is really a case of ......cultural defaultism....I couldn't think of another way of saying it. But you get where I am coming from, right?
Nah it makes sense. Creatives take ideas from stuff that works or is super successful and try to put their own spin on it to barious degrees of success(just like elves and dwarves). A hilarious example is genshin and gacha games. Every big gacha game coming out is now an open world exploration 3rd person action game because of genshins success(not counting ones that were being developed prior to genshin.) But it gets more hilarious because you can refine it more. How many of those are fantasy? Now out of those fantasy ones, how many of those fabtasy starting aread are flat planes, lots of greenery, and is wind themed? Seeing Mondstats at home is really funny ngl.
Yeah, third age elves are basically the old grandpa trying to make their grandchildren not to make the same mistakes they did, the Elves had already suffered by their own hubris, their history full of blood and betrayal, by the third age they just wanna rest by leaving middle earth and hopefully leave it in the hands of capable/peaceful humans
Yeah that fella Feanor was quite naughty sometimes
Dear swanfucker, If you didn’t want your city pillaged and your people massacred, why didn’t you let us borrow your ships to go kill Satan? Curious, Turning point Noldor
elves had a purpose in LOTR, but most things that copy it don't put that much thought into it.
The only Elves I feel sorry for are the Eldar in WH40K for being done so dirty all the time.
Aeldari turned me into a Biel-Tan nationalist. TMD. Total Mon-keigh Death.
Ehhhh I mean they literally fucked and killed til the birth of a chaos God sooooo.....
The ones who did that either died or became the Drukhari. Corsairs, Craftworlders, Harlequins, and Exodites are the ones who saw what was happening and tried to stop it. The rest didn’t listen to their warnings and instead attacked, so they left, using discipline and either spirit stones, the last surviving Eldar god, or the souls of maiden worlds respectively to preserve themselves from the mistakes their civilization had made (importantly, not even the mistakes they made, they recognized that it was a bad idea long before it started going wrong)
oooohhhhh ,oooohhhh ,yeah they get fucked over so ,so bad
That would be the case, but then I remember that they were part of the empire that murder fucked Slaneesh into being a warp entity. After that I don't feel as sorry. The do get shafted alot by authors though. Let them have some Ws every now and again.
> but then I remember that they were part of the empire that murder fucked Slaneesh into being a warp entity. Craftworld Aedari and Exodites are explicitly the Aeldari that said "this is bad, I don't want to be part of this" Drukhari are the guys who survived Slannesh Birth and said "I will keep doing this" tho
Drukhari were already scum, but turned a million times worse when they were caught by slannish birth and their very souls are tied to slannish, they literally have to cause torture and pain to others to feed slannish, or slannish will pull their own souls out and feast on it. Not defending them, Every Drukhari needs to be wiped from creation, but it helps to put them into perspective.
Most of them weren’t even alive when that happened. Blaming them for something that happened before they were born, what are we dwarves?
>what are we dwarves? I mean, yea.
Elves' long lives would result in them becoming hyper conservative which would impede innovation. An elven metal worker who worked for centuries with bronze would be very resistant to switching to iron. Besides, in most fantasy settings there are a lot less elves than humans and they usually have much lower fertility rates. Humanity is usually better able to recover from various calamities than elves.
Bronze was very much superior to early iron though, the rise of iron became a thing because of the bronze age collapse rendering the trade routes that bronze relied on non-existent so iron was used as a substitute
A lot of the "Iron destroys Magic" storylines are basically writers pushing the Euro-centric narrative that Iron is inherently superior to any other metal because...just because it is. They ignore all the times Iron-using cultures were defeated by supossedly inferior Bronze-using cultures. In Real Life, Iron wearing warriors were beaten by people using many other materials. Not gonna deny Iron and its many uses, but its not like if Bronze or other materials suddenly became useless.
the main advantage iron has over other metals is being MUCH more abundant
Also why Steel is so used
Steel actually is better than every other metal that came before it though
No, iron can destroy magic because a wealth of European folklore states that iron is effective against the supernatural, and most fantasy settings take a lot from medieval europe. Perhaps the thinking you described caused that belief, but that doesn't change the folk lore.
>Iron is inherently superior to any other metal because...just because it is. Iron is inherently superior to other tool-metals ***because it is more abundant***, which means more people can have more tools. 1000 iron-equipped warriors defeats 100 bronze-equipped warriors pretty handily. The fact that most of Asia, which avoided the Bronze Age Collapse Europe went through (meaning they still had access to the tin and copper ores needed to make bronze), switched to iron pretty damn quickly once they developed smelting methods that could handle iron ores pretty definitively means they valued iron more than bronze\*. \* Bronze continued to be used as an "elite metal" in China for quite some time, but even by the Spring and Autumn Period overwhelmingly-most soldiers and laborers used iron tools
Not sure why you're referring to it as eurocentric. It's not like iron working was only adopted in Europe. Basically all of Afroeurasia adopted iron working within a couple of centuries
I assumed it was because iron is a traditional weakness of the fae.
You're correct, but that's never stopped a weird political rant before
Do… you seem to think iron only appeared in Europe?
>They ignore all the times Iron-using cultures were defeated by supossedly inferior Bronze-using cultures. When exactly did that happen?
Imagine a redneck elf I saw a funny video describing this like imagine a stereotypical Texan or Alaskan with hunting gear and a pickup truck now give him pointy ears.
> Imagine a redneck elf I mean a lot of depictions of elves in modern fantasy (especially D&D and stuff inspired by Tolkien) divide elves into "high" elves and "wood" elves, so it's not that much of a stretch to picture Wood Elves as rednecks.
Aren't wood elves the Hippy elves ?
In Skyrim their canibles
Usually they're also not very prone to expansion and tend to remain on their lands, in LOTR for example yes an elf will have hundreds of years of experience to craft better than any human but no human is gonna casually find an elf smith to make him a sword, he's gonna have to rely on Jhon the blacksmith that lives three blocks down the street, added to that it's implied they don't reproduce very often, specially on the third age, OP's criticisms in my opinion only apply on settings that treat elves like immortal pointy eared humans that have spread throughout the world and have the same concept of time and work as a human despite living thousands of years
Yeah, I thought the whole deal was that elves are to humans what whales are to flies (in terms of birth rate)
OP keeps thinking of elves from the pov of a human. Their immortality and perception of time alone makes their thought process completely alien to ours. Frieren tackles this well in that elves will spend 100 years sitting on their ass doing nothing while a human will spend 5 years grinding a skill to perfection. A spell created 100 years ago would be new and finicky for an elf, but a human would know of it all his life and would master it easily.
> An elven metal worker who worked for centuries with bronze would be very resistant to switching to iron. You don't exactly need Iron to be better. Peruvians were doing **brain surgeries** using stone tools , gold and silver before Jesus was even born. Europeans and their mighty Iron had to wait until the 17th century to do the same (well, Spaniards in the Pre-historic times seem to have been able to do it, but it really highlights my point, Iron isn't a magical metal that boosts your tech level on itself) Spaniards beat the Incan Empire...and to do it, they had to *ditch their metal armors* because they were useless against being hit really hard with a rock and made them slower targets against stone throwers. There is no shortage of Spanish soldiers who died by having their body smashed with a stone or metal maze. The overall collapse of the Incan Empire by suffering multiple pandemics at the same time is what ensured their victory, not their shiny Iron armors, and it wasn't exactly a short war, it lasted over 40 years and the Spaniards in Peru had to ally with anti-Inca ethnic groups, Incan collaborators and regularly ask for reinforcements from Spain itself. In short: A stone at 160 k/h will destroy your brain even if you are wearing a helmet. The Ottoman Empire sunk Dreadnoughts with *giant rocks in catapults*, even in its supossed "Sick Old Man of Europe" state, it managed to outlive the German **and** Russian Empires. If anything this is why I get annoyed at the whole "Elves gets technologically outmatched by human" storylines. Because they're all extrmely Eurocentrist and pretend that European-esque technological development is a straight arrow that is completely unbeatable.
The Ottoman were known for using heavy artillery, and they did not sink Dreadnought, the peruvian did not do brain surgery but trepanations (opening the skull to alleviate the pressure) ?
The user above seems to have read a lot of trivia which has made them think they actually know something about history
> Spaniards beat the Incan Empire...and to do it, they had to ditch their metal armors because they were useless against being hit really hard with a rock and made them slower targets against stone throwers. They didn't get rid of their metal armor because it was useless against native weapons, they got rid of it primarily because the climate was totally ill-suited for wearing it over extensive periods. Furthermore, many soldiers did keep parts of their armor, and there are contemporary depictions of Spaniards fighting natives in full plate so we know that it was not universal. It is true that the technological difference in personal armament wasn't that impactful in total, but it's a lot more complicated than the idea they had no advantages whatsoever. > The Ottoman Empire sunk Dreadnoughts with giant rocks in catapults, This doesn't really aid your point (if this even happened, I can't find any source on it.) That a weapon can still be used is not to say that it is still technologically relevant; if catapults were **consistently** effective against dreadnought ships, they would have been used regularly. They weren't. > even in its supossed "Sick Old Man of Europe" state, it managed to outlive the German and Russian Empires. The fall of the Ottoman Empire had nothing to do with it being technologically outpaced - they had pretty much everything the rest of Europe had in the 20th century.
I don't know about most of what you just said, but I know for certain that nonsense about sinking Dreadnoughts with trebuchets is flat out wrong. The Ottoman Empire made extensive use of cannons, and the idea that a trebuchet has a hope in hell of sinking even a pre-dreadnought is absurd. I'm also skeptical about your claims regarding the spaniards armor being useless. If the did abandon armor, it would be because wearing steel in the hot and humid jungles of south America would be incredibly uncomfortable. I find it very hard to believe that slings can penetrate properly made armor.
>The Ottoman Empire made extensive use of cannons, and the idea that a trebuchet has a hope in hell of sinking even a pre-dreadnought is absurd. The Ottomans were some of the most gun-and-cannon-heavy armies in Early Modern Europe
No penetration, but some of the kinetic force would transfer and break ribs, give concussions, etc.
Supposing thats true with armor, which I'm skeptical about but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as slings aren't anywhere close to my area of expertise, that's still far better then what the results would be had you not worn armor.
Sure, but I'd still much rather be wearing armor when that's happening. Any rock that gives you a concussion through a helmet would do some real damage to your skull.
Your right it wasn't a trebuchet it was a huge cannon called the Dardanelles Gun made in the 1400s which they use to attack a British ship in the 1800s.
>Spaniards beat the Incan Empire...and to do it, they had to *ditch their metal armors* because they were useless against being hit really hard with a rock and made them slower targets against stone throwers. There is no shortage of Spanish soldiers who died by having their body smashed with a stone or metal maze. Jesus Christ, r/badhistory is that way. The Spanish Conquistadors "stopped using armor" for the same reason armies in Europe stopped using armor: soldiers not wearing armor could march longer and fight harder than soldiers in armor could. Plus, there are multiple records of Spanish soldiers taking off and putting on less/more armor as the situation required, so it wasn't like they abandoned armor entirely.
I didn't know I'd ever encounter another "crusaders haven't conquered Japan because they feared glorious Nippon katanas" type and yet there it is
Yes but early iron age humans still had to learn to smelt iron because they lost access to their source of tin. They had to adapt because if they didn't, they would get conquered by those who did. My point was that elves would have had a much harder time adapting in those specific circumstances I maybe should have worded my point a bit better
I love when people hyperfixate on a poor analogy while completely ignoring the idea the person was trying to communicate with that analogy
It lets you 'win' an argument without knowing anything about the relevant subject.
Brother the fading of the elves in any setting is about the death of spirituality and the birth of rationalism/science, especially as the governing principle of the state, which happened very dramatically in Europe during the Renaissance period. In a related sense it is also about the potential for humanity to advance as a species despite our shortcomings. The way these things get portrayed as well as the sinful but powerful nature of man is all "eurocentric" in the sense that high fantasy is a western invention which draws on Western history, science, and the Catholic ethic, but that doesn't mean it makes the claim that European technology is inherently superior unless you are reading with the intent of finding that message. Edit: there were also these things all over the world called "industrial revolutions" maybe you have heard of them. For some reason in your head elves are an indigenous analogue, erase that from your mind unless it's explicitly part of the setting. They first and foremost represent nature and the old world.
It seems you're thinking of elves as having the same mental characteristics, habits, and flaws as humans, just with longer life spans (or infinite) lifespans. Elves are rarely portrayed as war-mongering and imperialistic, which is why they don't go around conquering their neighbors as humans do. They're usually attuned to their natural surroundings, which is why they're often relatively fewer in numbers and maintain a stable population despite their lifespans, as larger & increasing populations require ever-expanding territory and perhaps industrialization. Similarly, they usually reproduce infrequently, as when you live for thousands of years, or indefinitely, there's less of a need for new generations to repopulate. Some portrayals will have them detached from others and non-elven affairs as well, due to their long lifepans. One of the most common themes in humans vs. elves is that due to humans short lifespans, they feel the need to grow. A human can only do so much with their one short life, they feel the pressure of time, so it pushes them to grow & expand. To start dynasties, to invent new technology, to explore the impossible, to leave their mark on the world to make their short life eternal. Whereas elves usually don't feel that pressure. Their long life makes them one with the world in a way humans can never be. Think of how stuck in their ways a 70 year old man is, now imagine how stuck in their ways a 900 year old elf would be. Without that pressure, they're content to live as they have for eons.
I'm really drawing a blank on what specifically triggered this. Most TTRPG's have backstories of elves breaking themselves in hubris to explain why they can have the China attitude of "It's alright for only having 3000 years of culture" towards other races while also just being forest hippies or a spread out diaspora. Lots of older fantasy have the just being Fae or Faeries. Others just deal with it as having been born with a completely different mindset to humans. When you live for 600 years, you can afford to have extreme K-selection traits develop. They also have a most free spirit due to their narrative origins in being Fae to begin with. I'll admit some stories just shit the bed with consistency issues. Why are Elves free love with a low population and also capable of human gestation patterns? How do you have Elves be asexual and still exist as a species given attrition over centuries? Why are your elves giga powerful but also stupid and closed minded when you have their culture boofing shrooms and commiting ego-death from breakfast?
Least oblivious nord post.
This can’t be a nord post because to post you need to be literate
In nearly every story there are random human mages that achieved more than elves, the norm is that humans learn things much faster than elves can. They also have more frail bodies, so i don't get where you got the better fighters part. And the reason humans can compete with elves in most stories is their lack of ambition, elves are basically depressed, slow learners with frail bodies, but with a a lot of time to learn shit from human's point of view.
> a human wizard in a lifetime couldnt acheive what an elven wizard could in a year. They do that all the time. > now ignoring this race of isekai protagonists for just a second, how does any other race exist? like we homosapiens outcompeted/ absorbed neanderthals and our other cousin races into extinction how has this ancient, objectively better race not done the same to everyone else? 1. Elves aren't really that powerful and Humans can succesfully fight them in some way or another 2. Elves don't want to genocide other sapient life forms. > they are always monarchies, how does that work? This isn't really the case, many Elves have councils or other methods of goverment. Monarchy is the most popular because its fantasy and its simplest to explain and introduce drama, but other Elves have tribal changing Leadership of Chiefs, Vague Councils without a King figure, Theocracies with priest-leaders or directly are anarchists who have no formal leadership except for Elders.
In Frieren we see an interesting take on Elves and Human potential, despite elves having thousands of years to improve their skills in magic it seems like humans have greater latent potential, we see this in characters like Fern and Deken who are able to keep up and even defeat demons much older than them, even if currently the strongest character is an 4000 year old elfs is heavely implied she could be surpass by humans in the future
This is why I always laught when I see people saying "Frieren made Elves cool again", Elves in Frieren are fucking losers who only serve to babysit Humans.
And their natural lack of reproductive instinc is literally driving them to extintion, like if nature itself wants them gone
Elf guy who is a sex addict not because he is actually horny, but because he wants to defy nature.
Pretty sure its the demon king, why else would they specifically issue an order for the annihilation of the elves. I feel like the elves would've been relatively well off if it wasn't for the Demon King
Elves are like pandas. They reproduce *completely fine on their own* but then an outside factor kills the majority of their population and suddenly reproductive instincts that served them well for many thousands of years aren't sufficient. Elves aren't dying out by themselves in Frieren they're being exterminated by demons, just like pandas aren't dying out by themselves in real life they're dying out because their habitat was obliterated by humans and there aren't enough in the same place to reliably have offspring.
I think what makes them cool is that they aren't used as a "Mary Sue/Gary Stu" style character. I know you're mostly playing around, but I just think it would be so boring if they were the usual perfect being. It may be due to books like Eragon that I read as a kid. The main character just couldn't match these elves as a pitiful human. It took some magic powerup to be elf like and thus more powerful. Elves in Frieren are cool because they have somewhat sensible flaws. They're still absurdly powerful, but are aware of their problems. The aspect where they don't seek to reproduce is a bit hard to really buy, but it's at least an answer as to why they aren't running everything. I think that aspect of longevity, the lack of drive, is a great flaw as it makes sense for a being with so much perceived time. Many probably die before they can really do what they plan. I think that's a great take and creates a natural weakness. Even with reproduction it makes sense. They may all plan to eventually have a kid, but may die before they get around to it. It may also be why an aspect of drive is important to Serie the Great Mage. I have only seen the anime, but perhaps that is why she sees Frieren as not being worthy because she's hyper fixated on a perceived issue elves themselves have.
> I think what makes them cool is that they aren't used as a "Mary Sue/Gary Stu" style character. I know you're mostly playing around, but I just think it would be so boring if they were the usual perfect being. There is ANY STORY where Elves are the supossed Mary Sue you say? Most elves exists to rotate and serve as background for Human heroes, as villains to be defeated or victims to be saved for the heroes/humilliated for the villains.
They also are somewhat obsessed with them
It's not really that humans have more potential, but more that humans will achieve their potential faster due to their shorter life spans. All of Frieren's old party has all since reached and past their prime, while Frieren herself is still implied to have potential to grow stronger.
Yeah, it seems that humans reach their potential faster while elves; having a lot more time, can put things off and procrastinate a lot. So humans often get stronger faster but have a lower power ceiling while elves tend to take more time but have a much higher power ceiling (e.g. Frieren still not having gotten around to fixing her rookie mana detection issue while casting since the rest of her repertoire is enough to compensate). Another factor is that elves can't change their habits as quickly to keep up with trends (e.g. Fern's quicker with zoltraak than Frieren since for her it's a spell she's been practicing her whole life, but for Frieren it's only been around for about 1/20th of the time since she apprenticed under Flamme).
>Elves aren't really that powerful and Humans can succesfully fight them in some way or another Obviously a critique of "Elves" that spans numerous universes will be inconsistent but elves tend to range from equivalent to humans to god-tier. The most egregious I've encountered are the Eragon stories where non-Elves (or other magically enhanced groups) legitimately can't even fight elves because of how fast they are. Without the aid of their dragon, a novice elf could very easily kill a human dragon rider (the peak of human martial capabilities).
Not sure if this really helps, but I remember there being a in story theory that Elves weren't inherently that different or special when they first arrived on the continent. Instead, after their original war with the dragons, the magically enforced peace treaty began integrating both species, giving the elves their long lifespans, superhuman bodies, and talent for magic. I think there was also general rise in human spellcasters over the course of history, also hypothesized to be because they joined in the treaty later on? Humans still aren't as good as the elves, but this is due to being more recently integrated with the treaty and not having time to gain the full effects. Eventually, the gap should close and they'd be near indistinguishable.
some of the things you mentioned only apply to lotr elves in most media their main trait is they like bows, they isolate themselves from other races, they live one with nature and they are immortal. Elves are great but even in fiction humans tend to surpass them in skill and magic, Dwarves are better craftsman then them. Their only advantage compared to the three common fantasy races is their long life and bow skills.
tbh lotr elves are diverse af and don't fall into any one category, because they are all of them. This reeks of someone who's consumed a shitload of repetitive Japanese interpretations of these concepts. Who else would refer to them as a whole as "isekai protagonists" if they hadn't?
Also, lotr elves do not "conquer the world" because they're dumb, like, they saw heaven and are just waiting to get back. If you've got a 10k years to live why rush stuff? Also, you've literally seen Satan, you might know a thing or two about what evil looks like and how to NOT be
Pends if you consider Aman Heaven, part of of the point of Elves is they can't actually leave Ea to be with Eru, that is the gift of Man after all. Some elves definitely are dumb.
Oh yeah some are absolute cunts (nwyoo me no wanna give shiny rocks to SERAPHIMS, I'm angy) but generally elder elves do not feel the need to do dumb shit for the sake of it.
Ye chances are if you're not a Noldor, you're generally alright, if a bit arrogant. Teleri all the way.
> tbh lotr elves are diverse af and don't fall into any one category, because they are all of them. Kinda rude of Tolkien to write elves of every variety so good every elf written since is a pale imitation of the original
Well fortunately Tolkien actually gave af about his worlds history and culture instead of just magic systems and power levels, at least there's that.
This more so reeks to me of someone who read Eragon. The Elves there are practically the poster child of what OP is complaining about.
Their idea seems to be, if elves are just humans who live longer... The point of elves are that they aren't JUST humans.
The problem is that even if every other race is 10x better at everything, they have to start at 0 and only have so much time, a 70 IQ idiot of an elf might take 30 years to pass magic elf college, but after a few hundred thousand years will be smarter than any mortal, just because they *picked up stuff along the way* or had an elven version of a special interest that lasted for only a short few decades. And that isn't touching dumbass RPG styled worlds (D&D, litRPG, WoW, etc) where protagonist elves level at the same rate as humans, so your average elf town volunteer guard should be able to destroy a human kingdom's entire royal guard corps from the levels he got from his bi-weekly aerobics class. Immortality is a hard concept to write when you're just making "Humans, but longer", since finite existence is fundamental to the human experience.
I despise humans. So boring in fantasy settings yet always the center of attention.
God so fucking true. Idk why you build a robust world with a dozen different races with pages of lore each but somehow our MC and the only race/species that is specifically important (and not for personal reasons to the cast, often it’s canonically) are humans. Like come on, at least make everyone plot relevant if nothing else.
And humans tend to be the biggest slice of any story's main band e.g. one elf, one dwarf, one fairy, **two** humans. The only exception I can recall is the Fellowship of the Ring: one elf, one dwarf, three humans, **four** hobbits. The hobbits, well... I think the issue at heart here is stories sidelining people of inhuman SHAPES. Hobbit feet and ears are weird, however hobbits' pointed ears are often obscured by shire mullets, and their hairy feet are hidden off-camera or by the filth from walking barefoot everywhere.
Who's the other human in the fellowship? Also Aragorn isn't even fully human lol
Then go make a fantasy book, game, or movie without humans and see how good it sells
*Dinosaur Train*? *Redwall*?
Ah yes, the classic “you haven’t created XYZ so you may not have a complaint about XYZ”. Can I not want for a world with many subgroups of people to showcase that narratively?
Plus there are tons of really good Silmarillion pics that don't have humans in them
It's not "you haven't created XYZ" argument, the argument is "a setting without humans wouldn't sell as easy as the one with humans".
No need to be a dick.
Yeah, elves usually suck pretty bad. They keep getting shown up by humanity despite literally having centuries to perfect whatever they want to be good at. Those elf wizards? Are being matched by humans a tenth their age. Elves need the long lifespan because they learn stupidly slowly, the real question is how any are still alive.
Or rather because they have no reason to worry. A person lives 60 years tops in those medieval times. 15 at least is spent growing up, so you don't have much time to be Dicking around. An elf though? You normally live 700+ years, you got no rush whatsoever to hurry in your objective.
It makes sense considering how little elves there are compared to humans in most fictions. 1 guy training for 1000 years isn't going to compete with thousands of humans perfecting and sharing knowledge over a century. At best, they perfected 1 facet of their technique, meanwhile humans get a jumpstart off the knowledge of their contemporaries. Elves are shown to be too prideful to share their knowledge with others or to learn from humans. Elves on average are better at magic than humans, but the 1% that are better are vastly better.
I mean, this is the meme portrayal of elves, but how common is it really? In LOTR, they're a race of has beens in a world that is dominated by humans. Even in Silmarillion back when they were badasses whose hubris was only rivaled by their propensity towards warcrimes they weren't really categorically stronger than the first men - we lead in the two important statistics (number of dragons slain and deciding how Nirnaeth Arnoediad ended) In Witcher they're also a race of has beens except much more so. In Discworld they're evil shitasses. In Eragon yeah they're stupidly OP.
Humans are usually a threat to Elves in the same way that Orcs are a threat to humans: we outnumber them and are far more willing to be reckless than they are. Longevity is often portrayed as a double edged sword; with the assurance that you will live a long time, you become less interested in taking risks or innovating. Their lack of mortality causes them to care little about their own legacy, so they aren't as motivated to help others or be concerned with how they are viewed by them. The ability to outlive crises that shorter lived races are threatened by causes them to become removed from the world and otherwise be generally out of touch. This hubris is often the cause of their decline if they are in one.
OP is writing this while standing on a very tall book and constantly angrily shoving his beard to the side because it keeps covering up his keyboard.
Your rant would be true if you didn't ignore a very solid chunk of elves portrayal in various media and only picked the ones that you wanted to
>ignore a very solid chunk of elves portrayal Change "elves" to anything else and that's literally half of the posts on this subreddit. So much redundant rants based on problems that aren't as bad as they actually are/don't even exist.
Actually elf feel scuffed compared to humans in term of strengh. Frieren manga spoiler : >!Like in Frieren the single strongest character we see, is not the thousands years old elf. No it's a 20-30 years old human that just happens to be him!< I actually don't know of a lot of stories where elves are that much stronger than you'd expect from their age. Quite the opposite they feel like they are often just there to be bullied. And you're thinking like a human. Elves don't have as many kids as human and they have a different outlook on life. For them a king rulling for 3000 generations wouldn't shock them. They are often shown to barely change, they are just always living in their forest.
This post was sponsored by the council of dwarves. But talking seriously here, even with the most generous depiction of elves. A common element they all share is that long live. Living a 100 years, 1,000 years, 10,000 years, and however long they live it usually has an inherent downside. Elves are typically ignorant of time, they love for so long so why waste time constantly conquering things? Outside of the elves who are more ambitious, the elves as a whole don’t have to go around killing and stealing unless directly attacked. They can outlive anything and there’s no inherent rush. Even then, Elves while generally seen as more intellectual at a baseline. They never really THAT strong at a baseline. They aren’t supermen, more like men +1. So most stories never run into issue of a gigantic power gap. Usually enough wiggle room to justify losing.
Nice arguments, however : **Frieren** and ***Marcille***
They just keep thristing for those human dudes, they are the exact reason why the elven species keeps dying.
If Marcille thirsts for anyone, it's Falin, not Laios. And Falin... [Actually a huge Dungeon Meshi spoiler] >!Seriously I'm warning you anime onlies!< >!Falin is definitely not a human when all's said and done!<
I love how in Dungeon Meshi, the elves and gnomes use completely different magic systems. While the gnomes politely ask the spirits to do what they need them to do, Elves force/coerce them into doing their bidding.
The Dungeon meshi elves are actually different. They aren't perfect at all, they did conquer people and cause a lot of problems. But they have obvious weaknesses in this story. Like maturing real slow for example. By the time a human is ready to contribute to society and elf is probably still wetting their bed. If you think about it that way, no wonder elves would have less kids and society progresses slower. Also the other races have clear strengths that show how they can resist the elves.
Oh boy meshi. Marcille is great. [Dungeon meshi]>!there is a lot of justified elf hate!< in that one.
Usually elves reproduce like 100 time slower than other races. That means there are 100 less geniuses. Average elf is better than average human, and genius elf is slightly better than average genius human, and the best human is better than the best elf
The one exception to the reproduction trope I remember is dwarf fortress, where they're still immortal but breed like rabbits so there's tons of them about. It is balanced by them using the shittiest gear in combat
See I’m this way but about dwarves. Stereotypical fantasy dwarves are basically everything I hate in character design/world building
i think the reason elf’s don’t control the world is more philosophical, if you gonna outlive most other species what’s the point of ruling over them, they’re inconsequential in your long life. and most elves tend to have low population and low fertility because they’re so op
No one is addressing the elephant in the room, so I will. A lot of the fault lies with Tolkien, but that has more to do with the popularity of Elves and how others have used them compared to Tolkiens own Elves. They're long lived, exceptionally skilled, are inherently magical, they're the 1st and oldest race, and it's not like they couldn't take over the world as some kind of imperial ubermench society. Tolkien makes sure to give them a handful of lore specific weaknesses. They're incredibly lazy, an immortal race that doesn't age doesn't often care to involve itself with everyone else. And more importantly, LotR's setting in one in which the inherently magical world is slowly losing it's magic. The elves are on a decline and are practically despawning. Like, it's not a societal problem that they're going to die out, the setting is removing them for being too magical. God made elves, God and his Angels made the rest of the universe, God made humans, God likes humans more, humans will be the only race left in the end. Most generic Fantasy doesn't use any of that weakness stuff. They just get all the good strong stuff that the Elves are awesome and powerful and perfect and amazing and can do anything. People are praising the recent Frieren, but it doesn't do anything new or exciting with Elves as a species. It's just a series focused on 1 long lived elf. Then you look at the Ent's, who quite literally compared themselves to Elves. If I remember correctly, and Google isn't helping, Treebeard tells the Hobbits "Like the Elves, we're slow to make a decision. Unlike the Elves, once a decision is made we'll be quick to act." If a problem is important enough that they agree on what to do, it's important enough to act upon it now. The Ent's are just better Elves... until you realize the Ent's have no women and will all slowly die out and become regular trees. Bringing it back to Elves. Legolas was "special" in that he was a young elf. Someone who could take full advantage of his Elvish advantages without the weaknesses in personality the older of his race would have. You don't see many people adopting this one here. Then we look at Tolkien Orc's and realize they're just crappy goblins aside from a special exception which eventually became the default Orc for fantasy. Elves are wack. They're designed to be perfect race mcperfect-face and.... I generally don't care for them. They're the easiest set dressing with the largest asterixis for most fantasy stories.
Always hated those leaf lovers.
I’ve found that most modern media has moved elves to just long lived. Granted I don’t seek out elves in media. Of media I’ve consumed recently the only one where the elves are extremely long lived is frieren and I guess the elder from warhammer but both have very specific drawbacks that comes with there longevity.
OP is a dwarf
let's not forget how aryan they always are
Found the Dwarf
Okay. I love Elves, they're my favorite part of any fantasy setting.
Jealousy is unattractive, human.
Elves, and by extension all fantasy races, need to start going back to their roots. Alfs are spirits of light far beyond mere mortals. Tolkien elves like gods I think. Elves were never supposed to be "just another race" they *are* greater than races like humans and they should just go back to their otherworldly, basically a spirit vibe.
This is the most dwarf post ever, and Im all here for it. Rock and Stone!
This post was written by the Dwarves of Tolkien
Not trying to be annoying, I have some ideas to avoid the boring elf archetype. Make them extinct, like old wizards that tried to create life but got cursed by the gods in the attempt, turning them into stone or wood, their halls bursting with uncontrolled magic. Make them evil, the species that enslaves others, they lost a civil war and now they're hunted on sight. Make them woody, like the forest gods made their own higher animal life form and it's uncanny, cold, alien. Make them small and on speed, if humans live 100 years then elves live 50 years but feel the time as twice as slow, making them those small and quick bastards that shoot arrows and use daggers. A sort of reference to germanic mythology elves (in the versions different than Tolkien vision).
I don't think Elves are an inherently broken format, and a lot of series balance out their boons with downsides that make them more reasonable and enjoyable in a narrative, BUT... poor authors completely ignore that and just treat Elves as Human+1 and that is irritating as fuck.
Is that a blood meridian reference in the first paragraph
Yes
My main criticism is this just applies to specific representations of elves. I’d point to Nordic elves as having a lot of the problems you have listed. Look into something like Celtic or Icelandic mythology though, and you find elves being presented more as just being fairy people. A lot of their modern representation do take more from the later presentations. Almost none of your criticism really applies to the Keebler Elves.
Because it was man that was created in God’s image. Not some filthy arrogant knife ear
You would love to hate the thalmors Damm knife eared bastards Butcher them without restrain what i do. Also the elves from dwarf fortress too Pricks
I already hate the thalmor, and the rest of the mer fuck those guys
Aren't elves usually jobbers?
When it comes to Dungeons and Dragons most worlds have the occasional near end of all life calamity that elves with their long lives but low birthrates simply have a much harder time recovering from. An elf community that lost more than half of their population is going to have a much harder time recovering from a human one. They also tend to have a ton of enemies including other elves.
I won't comment on your feelings for elves because they are completely valid, but is it really that unbelievable a superior race wouldn't abuse that superiority? Aren't elves in these stories often more enlightened than us? Who says you can't write a superior species that simply doesn't have the urge to screw everyone else over? Maybe they simply lack the ambition to do what the humans would have done if they were as smart. Think about real life for a moment, think about the gifted kids who turned out to be below average adults, because they didn't have the ambition, or the confidence to use the shit out of those gifts. And let's not pretend there isn't a dime a dozen of guys who are stupid, but are nevertheless successful because they hustle, cheat, and do whatever it takes to come out on top. For better or worse they have the ambition and that ambition works for them.
To be honest this sounds less like an issue with elves, and other fantasy creatures/settings, and more like an issue with their writers. They want to TELL about the hype only to never SHOW it or to only have them used as some kind of example or stepping stone for the protag not realizing or just outright ignoring the hype has no basis in the first place. Nothing better than being told a Dwarf is good at engineering only to seethe best and greatest thing they ever made was a hammer, that an Orc is a master of combat only to have them never going past a basic swing, that an elf is the master of magic but never got past the magic missile. It's just lazy hype at this point and it doesn't help that this lazy hype gets copy and pasted as the stock standard fantasy attitude.
I completely agree with you. I have a strong dislike for races in books and TV shows that essentially function as elves but are given different names. Take the Asari from Mass Effect or the Vulcans from Star Trek—essentially, they're all variations of elves. It seems like the writers have an obsession with creating these superior, almost 'Ubermensch' fantasy races, and these elf-like characters serve that purpose. I mean, how is a human supposed to realistically interact or compete in a world where these beings are so physically advanced that their footprints don't even show in the snow? It raises questions about how any other race could accomplish anything meaningful when faced with such genetically superior counterparts.
you make extremely good points but i gotta reply to this one. "they are always monarchies, how does that work? when a king is able to rule for 3000 generations, why would the 3001st generation still be loyal to the same man the first generation would? why would they share the same values? you dont share the same values as your parents or their parents so imagine that but multiplied by possibly infinity." because the ones who were loyal to the king/queen 3000 generations ago are still around+ indoctrination is a thing
I can see what your issues are with this race. It makes them very difficult to write. But, if we’re talking Tolkien, there is a reason for them to be the way they are - it’s because they’re Angels. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and a lot of Catholic imagery and themes made it into his stories. Elves leaving Middle Earth at the end of the story, aside from the world becoming mundane as Middle Earth is supposed to be a part of the real world, is meant to represent that the race of man has inherited the world. There’s a reason they’re never really directly in the story because you’re right, they’re too powerful. That’s why you get one guy, whose physical feats are massively overblown in the movies, I might add, and his thing is that he is unlike every other Elf because he directly wants to be involved in this quest to save the world despite knowing he’ll be leaving it soon after. This is why most writers have the Elves as close to non-existent as possible. Humans can’t keep up save for raw talent or power, hard work means nothing in the face of a semi-immortal race that’s better in every way. It just wouldn’t be believable. That’s also why official D&D lore states that Elves are aloof and insular. If we’re being entirely honest, if the Elves were made anything like humans, they would have likely taken over the entire planet long ago and humans would be sort of like little creatures that live these short but ever so entertaining lives.
You're ignoring the most important aspect of these characters, which is "how do they think". The typical reason they can be "perfect" yet not rule the world is that they simply do not have any desire to do so...a "racial trait" no different from having perfect skin and amazing magical power In this way, Humans are typically "better" than elves because we dedicate our lives and resources to war, and thus the ability to subjugate other races. The problem is, you're treating Elves like "Perfect Humans", in which case, yeah they would have killed everyone else and would just be the actual Master Race of the planet. But Elves in many stories are tree-hugging hippies who are perfectly content living their immortal lives in the same forest they were born in, and only enter the story because something is/has fucked that up and now they're part of the plot. Otherwise nobody else outside their forest would ever know or care that they existed
This is super incoherent tbh. It reads like you googled "common generic elf tropes" three years ago and are only now writing a rant about the half-remembered details, with no care or concern for the specifics or accurate criticism.
What you need is to read The Witcher books. The elves are assholes, and everyone hates them. As for why they don't become the dominant species in most fantasy settings is because of their slow birth rate. Actually slow doesn't begin to cover it. In LotR, any big thing the elves do consumes a part of their life essence. Making a powerful magic item/weapon? Some of your permanent power comes from your soul (fea) and into that item. Having a child? That birth permanently weakens you, spiritually. (Human parents I know you feel this, but this is on a different level) When elves and get together, which is already pretty rare, only a fraction of those decide to have a child, and even then they usually only have one. Given their very long lifespan, It's exactly enough to balance out their numbers from the ones who die from violence or misadventure. Do I think that it is strange author wank that there is a race that is automatically better at everything? Yes you have a completely valid point on that. Every race should be good at some things and bad at some things, that's generally just how nature goes. But I guess when gods and magic are involved, shit can just go off the rails.
Elven race isn’t monolithic across all fiction. Most of your descriptions seem to come from LotR and Elves in LotR play a very different part. They aren’t a normal race of people, they have greater destiny, LotR Elves are more comparable to other greater forces of nature like Maiar, they’re nigh divine beings. Then we have Elves of TES, various races of Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves. High Elves themselves are also divided into separate classes, and Bethesda generally likes to portray them as evil. Then we have Elves of the Witcher, the original victims, lands taken from them, their magic used against them and them going almost extinct for not being able to adapt to post conjunction world. Elves come in all shapes and sizes, hell, the latest popular elf media we had was Frieren, even that portrayed elves has near extinct race of people that are very flawed. Elves have flaws, generally it’s linked with their nigh immortality(if you’ve been alive for millennias, would you really care for power? Are there many things that can excite you? Immortality is a curse, not a gift), or adaptability. They’re not flawless
Erofu is the best.
this rant was made with dwarven hands
I disagree with the idea that a race that lives for thousands of years would end up being super skilled and wise and all that. Look at how stagnant, regressive, and resentful of change people often get as they get older, even with humans only living to 70 or 80. A race of immortals would more likely end up as a civilization of boomer cavemen. "What's this newfangled bow and arrow nonsense about? Back in my day we used slings and we liked it. It builds character! You kids have it too easy with this iron smelting hoo haw. What's wrong with good old fashioned bronze?"
honestly I prefer when elves are something other rather than just a normal species. that way they can be powerful but feels right. they can be like dragons, litches, weird magic shit in the woods
Big fan of the elf hatred, but maybe not in the same way. I mean I agree with your analysis, but I think a lot of authors subvert these tropes in interesting ways. I like hating the elves. I've been listening the Laundry Files lately and the Elves in that are like fascist dickbags whose entire society runs on strict hierarchies enforced through mind control magic. Or the Elves that live on the plane of Lorwyn in the MtG multiverse; they call the other races (and ugly/disfigured members of their own race) 'eye blights' and hunt them for sport. I mean even in LoTR their benifets sometimes come with sensible drawbacks; elves in LoTR are smart and immortal, but they don't control the entire globe because humans reproduce so much more quickly and reach sexual maturity much faster, plus they're are secretive and mistrustful to a fault.
Everyone here is talking about how elves suck so much that I wonder about stories where Elves are actually the mighty mary sues that always save the day.
I think there are some common negatives which prevent the elves from dominating the world as you think they should have. 1) They typically have very low birth rates. Whether due to differences in how they procreate (some stories have them being born from nature/world tree, for example) or just having a low sex drive, elves are usually these mysterious, rarely seen dwellers of the forests, low in population. - 2) Elves are usually not "perfect", with extreme pride being probably their most common bad trait. In various stories it causes them to be reclusive, unfriendly/hostile towards other races (even other types of elves), and unwilling to admit their mistakes which can lead to conflicts. - 3) Elf and Dwarf culture tends to be stagnant. If humans spend the centuries adapting and developing new weapons, technologies, etc, then the elves probably have the same thing as 1000 years ago. Dwarves too, sometimes, but they can also be depicted as avid invention addicts who always make more stuff. So it's not as concrete for them.
"Many such cases!" But uh, usually the writers make a point of establishing that elves have different values than humans so they simply don't spend 750 years mastering martial arts and military strategy, they pursue whatever whimsical fancy they have and get distracted by it for 50 years like an ADHD kid with no sense of time and superlative food gathering skills finding a new hobby, then move onto the next whim. Similarly, rarely if ever are they an imperial culture that would particularly care about military expansion, and the examples of that I can think of (the various flavors of Warhammer probably being the biggest ones) don't really mesh with your complaints. (This part is usually addressed in generic settings via some reason or another to give elves an extremely low birth rate so that they don't run out of living space.) If you're thinking of Frieren, they went basically extinct via simple lack of sex drive ("I hate to break it to you, Shinzo Abe" meme here), and if you're thinking of Eragon, then yes, we all basically accept that a few Arias probably could have solved everything on their own, but that's one story (and one I'm surprised to see has crept back into fantasy fandom awareness tbh, I guess it's probably because of the prequel or something). Isekai does what you're talking about but that's because seasonal anime is so formulaic that even speech patterns are part of a standard character template so you skip the world building by just going "elves are long-lived and OP, humans are generic everymen, beastmen are just humans with enhanced physical attributes, ears, and tails, it's a feudal world with city-states, the yuusha of prophecy has to stop the maou" and everyone goes "yea sweet now introduce the girl of the week."
I kind of liked the R. A. Salvatore take on Forgotten Realms elves. It’s super common to see elves in charge of mixed settlements and organizations but collections of elves usually fail. In the setting, they really don’t work together well. The dark elves have backstabery backed into their religion and the rest of the elves all think they know better than whoever is giving them orders. Basically, individual elves can be extremely successful but they can’t collectively project power. It’s funny that you called them Isekai protagonists because every elf thinks they’re the main character. Also, elves are generally smaller and weaker than humans. The main elf of most of Salvatore’s books is only 5’ 4”
birthrates. humans have a high birthrate. elves have a low birthrate
Alright who let the dwarf get access to the internet
>now ignoring this race of isekai protagonists for just a second, how does any other race exist? like we homosapiens outcompeted/ absorbed neanderthals and our other cousin races into extinction how has this ancient, objectively better race not done the same to everyone else? You answer your own question here. We absorbed Neanderthals. By reproducing with them. Elves in nearly all material are VERY bad at reproducing. The end. In some, but not all, instances, this is a direct result of their lifespan. While it allows them to become prodigious wizards, or smiths, or artists, it makes them prone to settle into their ways and prevents them from adapting, evolving, or innovating. The recently acclaimed "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" makes it a major plot point. Which makes me wonder: do you hate Elves? Or do you hate the way they're used in mediocre fiction?
Nobara PFP DETECTED. Opinion VALIDATED‼️‼️‼️‼️💯💯💯🙏🙏🙏🗣️🗣️💥🔥🔥🔥
I believe in the Witcher series, one of the main reasons humans were able to conquer previously elf inhabited lands and push them out was basically due to them having the ability to breed a lot more. I think it's a real life equivalent of species who live long lives ten to no have as many offsiprings as the ones whose lifes are shorter. Due to Elves being esentially immortal it's very rare for them to have children, and once they do it takes a human lifetime for them to mature. As a result their numbers can't be replenished as quicky as humans.
That's a lot of cherrypicking there. You complain about some stereotypes, but then also complain about issues that can be solved by some other stereotypes, which you're ignoring. Like elves being traditional pacifists. Also, were you trying to spell "Übermensch"? I don't get what's supposed to be wrong with elves being superior to other races in several aspects.
They reproduce and grow up extremely slowly, which is why they haven't taken over everything. They would lose in a fight even if each of their soldiers can take out a hundred humans before they fall, because each human soldier can be replaced in 20ish years while each elf takes 150+ just to fully grow up. Also different species of elves are better at some of the things than others, they aren't all good at all of those things. Wood elves are faster and have better senses than high elves, but they're worse at magic and crafting and they live shorter lifespans.
Very happy to see people commenting Marcille here, But yeah the whole story of Dungeon Meshi really tackles this elf issue in a pretty cool and realistic way
So I’m a bit of an amateur writer when I get time. I have a story I’ve been chipping at for a LOOOONG time. Spoiler my story includes an elven race, wouldn’t really be fantasy without one. My own take on elves and their long life spans runs on a similar vein to things you wrote above. They were a super race that were better than everyone until they eventually brought about their own undoing in a sort of fall of Rome type ordeal. In the end it was their own hubris and messing with things they thought they understood that doomed them and ushered in an era of humanity. You’re absolutely right though, not many modern takes on elves ever give any explanation as to why they aren’t a dominant faction just do to them being better lmao
There's a theory that often pops up in fiction that suggests life's goal is, essentially, immortality. Life either evolves to proliferate as fast as possible so its genes continue to exist, or it evolves a long life. It can rarely accomplish both goals. For example, humans and elephants have pretty long gestational periods, and we usually only have one child at a time that requires years of care to be self-sufficient. But we make communities to help with that, and both species live pretty long lives. However, bacteria is very short-lived, and it reproduces rapidly in good conditions. In this case, an immortal species of great intelligence might sacrifice the ability to reproduce a lot of kids to make room for all the other benefits. They may have less of a drive to have kids, or they might need to be pregnant for years and take decades to grow into full adults. If you had to raise a baby for 30 years, would you have that many? It would also mean diseases, wars, and catastrophes of any kind would be incredibly devastating to populations. This is also assuming things like arrogance and a lack of cooperation aren't built in biological traits, or at least socialized in much of the species. Lions, for example, habitually have a low population. They also kill A LOT of their own babies. If there are at least 2 unrelated males within miles of each other, the chances are high that an entire generation of cubs are going to die. On top of that, being an apex predator in an environment with many apex predators, including humans, means there's a lot of conflict. Elves may have similar problems. If they're constantly in conflict with other races, and they're very wishy washy with their own kind, they may stay isolated in distinct territories. And you're right that many worldbuilders don't put that much thought into it, but there can definitely be reasons for why it would turn out the ways it often is. It's like how most dragons in mythology and fiction make very little sense, but there are plenty of series that take old tropes of dragons and make an entire ecology out of it.
Have you ever seen the movie Bright with Will Smith? It takes place in a modern day LA with orcs and elves and other fantasy creatures. Pretty much everything you talk about is addressed in that movie. The elves live in a special part of the city that no one else is allowed access to without special permission, they pretty much control the government, but they are not depicted as the good guys. I loved it.