>elves are arrogant bastards who consider humans to be beneath them!
Where does this meme come from?
I've always thought that elves view humans as their wayward children.
Elves might lose patience with humans from time to time and they might think that they lack refinement and culture, but ultimately they treat humans with kindness as long as the humans are respectful towards them.
Elves like humans and view them as allies against the forces of evil.
>>47592033
Because it's what we would be like if we lived thousands of years.
The origins of that meme are obvious. They hardly need to be stated.
But, there's millions of elves, in thousands of types and subraces, in hundreds of different games and settings, so you are free to decide whether they are seen as arrogant or not, whether they actually are arrogant or not, and whether it really makes sense to ascribe that kind of personality trait to an entire race.
I tend to view it as a very case-by-case concept, where while elves that actually are arrogant bastards are relatively rare, there will always be those sorts of non-elven miscreants in-game who will project their insecurities as the elves thinking they are better than them, when it's really just themselves believing they are inferior to the elves.
>>47592033
It stems from different interpretations of elves. If we're going back to Tolkien as source material, the where the peoples of Middle Earth could be seen to represent different social classes in some interpretations, the elves would be representative of the nobility and royal classes. In that context, snobbiness makes a bit more sense. Elves do act with some snobbiness and tend not to keep themselves removed and distant from other peoples, living in beautifully tended places, much like royalty or nobility.
Consider Galadriel, who is often treated with as much reverence as The Queen of England, especially since Tolkien was British himself. Even the Mirkwood elves, who can be seen as more backwards and simple than others, make wine and sell it to support themselves, which is still seen as a luxurious and acceptable venture for nobility. So they tend to represent nobility whose estate has fallen into decline. The elves as a whole are departing from the world, symbolizing the diminishing importance of royalty as the modern age came into its own.
Anyway, it's theory and interpretation of the books, but the parallels make sense in the context of Tolkien, a British writer who had seen war and times of great societal change and wrote a fantasy epic. I mean, writers don't write in influential vacuums, and Tolkien could have easily taken from his own historical, societal, and personal experiences to pour into his writing. Given how much these books are adored, I'd say he had to.
Anyway, tl;dr elves might take influence from snooty nobility and that's why they're many times pricks.
>>47592387
Tolkien Elves also see men as highly corruptible. Their short lives and the fact they are not slaves to destiny or nature make humans fascinating and adorable, but unpredictable and kind of scary. They are also quick to decision; when presented with two options, an Elf has done and seen both done in the past and thus would contemplate the decision for a long time and try to find any third answer. A human wants a choice in the next hour, and would rather take a gamble than wait for an option there may never be.
As a result, Elves like humans generally but prefer to stay isolated from them as a whole. Like grandparents not able to keep up with the kids.
Everyone who copied Tolkien preferred them to be snobby pricks as a quick explanation of the above.
Isn't Tolkien the guy who pretty much set the standard for elves in today's culture? Elves before him were the same as Greek fantasy; bunch of troublemaking faggots that do nothing good for humans.
Elves in Tolkien world are wise noble people, who are pretty much holier than thou against the angry autistic dwarfs and power hungry humans. They definitely look down upon other races, not so much like Skyrim elves or something, but still look at other people as misguided and prone to mistakes. So I don't see a problem with the two interpretations we get today: enlightened nobles who don't want to be around human affairs, or arrogant motherfuckers who want to conquer humans and put them beneath.
And I guess there's Japan too with elves are horny sex slaves.
>>47592757
Japs deserve a third nuking.
>>47592757
What about cute elves who'll sell you flowers and apples?
>>47592033
People who live a long ass time, have the best mastery of magic, have civilizations that have lasted longer than the entire history of some races, and tend to be masters of their preferred crafts? Anon that's not arrogance, that is well deserved self-confidence.
>>47592911
No. Japan made me like some elves again. That is saying something because I had a clusterfuck hatred for elves thanks to that shitty series Eragon.
Japan made me see that elves does not have to be like that and can be cute buddies or lovers.
On another note, do you think that if humans with a lifespan of 120 years managed to extend their youth to let's say to 80 years, relationships with Elves would be much more fun? Instead of 1 or 2 decades it would can last for 4-6 decades.
I mean after all the shit about "Fountain of Youth" or "Elixir of Life" you think some Alchemist in a fantasy setting you would figure this shit out and make a shit ton of money selling that shit to other humans.
Like almost every other bad medieval fantasy cliche, it comes from a bastardization of Tolkien's work.
Because Tolkien's elves were objectively better from humans at any aspect. So they could affort to be fatherly figures to wayward children - as the wayward children gave them respect as they guides in return.
When you take most of the elven advantages and reforge it into pure subjective superiority in some aspects, elves may and probably will, judge those aspects are most important, and fields on which they suck as unrevelant, thus still believing that they're superior race.
But contrary to the situation with objective superiority, here humans don't have to share this view, and most likely won't. So they won't treat elves as their betters and respectable guides. So elves have to respond to what they concieve as human willfull ignotance with scorn, arrogance and superiority complex.
>>47592033
>Where does this meme come from?
Decades of fantasy writers misinterpreting Tolkien.
>>47593866
>misinterpreting
Do you really think it was the goal of those writers to recreate Tolkien's setting in exact detail?
>>47592033
>Where does this meme come from?
Old people.
>>47593951
No, but I think they wanted to take the stuff from Tolkien they liked. They saw Elves, though they were cool, and threw them in without really paying attention to how they acted. They saw Fair Folk who live in trees and were smart and immortal. So that's how they made their Elves. Then other writers drew inspiration from Tolkien as well as those who he first inspired.
Then the LotR films came out, which due to the constraints of cinema couldn't give as much detail on Elves as Tolkien did, so we had a whole new generation of aspiring writers who thought Orlando Bloom was the pinnacle of Elfdom.Make no mistake, I loved the movies. But ask any kid at the time who their favorite character was, and 9 times out of 10 it was Legolas
That's how, over half a century later, we went from Tolkien Elves to Tortellini's Elves.
>>47594099
>Make no mistake, I loved the movies. But ask any kid at the time who their favorite character was, and 9 times out of 10 it was Legolas
Man I hadthis phase
[/spoiler]It ended with realizing how stupid it was and then despising elves and being HFY as fuck in a reaction[/spoiler]and now I'm again full blown tolkienboo who likes elven master race the most
>>47594099
You only really get detail on why the elves are the way they are in The Silmarillion.
The Noldor that Galadriel is a member of are the oldest elves in middle earth, having gone to live in valimar for several years ere their return to retrieve the silmarils. The Sindarin stayed behind and never went to Valimar. Elrond is actually half-human, but chose to live forever since half-elves are given a choice of whether to live forever or to die someday.
Elves trusted and loved men for many hundreds of years in Beleriand that was, and many elven kings took human sons to foster. But when the majority of humans marched against elves and the valar in the wars against morgoth and sauron, they were forever held in contempt. Numenor completely siding with sauron and attempting to attack Valimar didn't help matters either. As long as men are mortal, the dark powers can sow their misdeeds in their hearts.
>>47592033
>I've always thought that elves view humans as their wayward children.
Why?
>>47594239
That's pretty much how the movies depict them and only a vanishingly small part of the population has read the trilogy, far fewer The Silmarillion.
Not sure how or why it happened, but in my group's settings the elves have all taken on Jewish stereotypical characterizations...
."Hi, we're here to claim the reward of 50 gold."
."Forty gold? What do you need with 30 gold?"
>>47594367
>TFW I forgot how to greentext...
You answered your own question, OP. Anyone who looks on a group of people that way is going to be resented by those people.
>>47594548
So I guess you resent your parents then?
>>47593837
>Because Tolkien's elves were objectively better from humans at any aspect
No. They were not. This is a big fat meme.
Let's start by saying that Men actually have free will and a afterlife. Then let's add that Eru all but got down to Middle-Earth and told the Elves "humans are my favorite now, get the fuck back to the West". THEN, consider the souls of dead Men will go to whatever Eru does after he's done with Arda, whereas Dwarves and Elves are bound to the world.
And even if they all went to the Undying Lands, they are now basically irrelevant to the rest of the fucking planet as Men are the ones in charge now.
>>47594716
Also, it wasn't precisely a surprise, the Valar knew that would happen literallly before Arda was even created and the elves knew it from them. By LotR they've accepted they're completely inconsequential
>>47594716
Dwarves aren't bound to the world. They die just like men. They do not go to the halls of mandos to await the end of the world.
>>47594778
More like they just got tired of life, and without the Blue and White rings, all their nice shit made to look like valimar will decay and lose its luster. So they said fuck it and finally went to Valimar, where they are not weary of the world ever.
>>47594783
What happens to Dwarves is not precisely clarified, but they definitely don't have the Gift of Men as they're not even counted as the Children of Ilúvatar. They're the result of Aule momentarily sperging out and doing shit without Eru's permission, letting them even exist was a big favor on itself
>>47594783
I don't have an English Silmarillion at hand for an exact quote, but the Dwarves did believe they'd end up in Mandos after death, although in a location separated from the Elves.
>>47594716
It was expicitly stated by Tolkien that neither fate of elves nor humans were "better", they were just "different"
And in mortal maters elves were
>physically stronger and more resilient
>wiser
>less prone to corruption
>immortal and thus able to accumulate experience over ages which further enhances their wisdom
>more beautiful
>having more talent in ANY art or craft
>having direct contact with the Valar and more of their favorAnd its hard to gauge favor of Eru himself as he never intervenes, at least, not openly, and each of events that can be theoretically atributed to such intervention doesn't seem to favor humans over elves in any way
>>47594574
Elves seem to have a white man's burden mentality though.
>>47594872
Immortality was only seen as a good thing by Men. Only Elves from the First Age are stronger than Men, and the very strongest and most skilled warriors in the setting are Men. Elves are not less prone to corruption in the sense that they stand more of it, they simply can't conceive corruption unless it's something like the One Ring influencing them
And everything on which they were once better than Men, including their crafts, gradually decayed to be only a pale shadow of what it once was
>>47594883
>tfw that is exactly how I usually play my elves' stance towards humans
>>47594099
Legolas is actually decidedly less elf than any of the Tolkien elves as people or individuals.
He's thought to be the youngest elf in existence, clocking in at only a couple thousand years old give or take a century, but calls all humans and dwarves children because he's kind of an asshole. He speaks a sort of more common pigeon elvish which though prettier than the language of men is thought by elves to be pretty guttural garbage, and he never bothered to learn proper high elvish, which is why he's useless at the gates of Moria. Tolkien got mad when people described or illustrated him as girly or generally slender like an elf, since he's explicitly described as being a bulky bloke. Galadriel's gift to him reflects this; a bow that's even bigger than the famed Mirkwood longbows. When the elves leave for their eternal magical homeland, they leave in convoys of beautiful elvish ships. Legolas decides he's going to carve his own fucking boat to sail there and bring Gimli with him. He fucking succeeds at both and Gimli becomes the first and only dwarf in the undying lands.
Basically, Legolas isn't Orlando Bloom as the movies made him out to be, he's elf Arnold Schwarzenegger.
>>47595032
Yeah, this made me laugh since i watch the movies forst and was expecting feminine boi toy orlando bloom, not hulk hogan with knife ears.
>>47595032
Much of the same can be said about the Elves born in Middle-Earth in general
Why is there no mention of the origin of the halflings in the silmarillion?
>>47595120
Because it happened really recently relatively speaking, and was already explained at the beginning of LotR
>>47594999
>Immortality was only seen as a good thing by Men
It were objectively good gain from perspective of "power gain" benefits, and i stated i meant this context.
>Only Elves from the First Age are stronger than Men
There weren't any indication they got weaker in any way. Thing is, most elves past third age that remained in Middle Earth were Nandor, just ruled by bunch of remaining Sindar and Noldor, and Nandor were always considered kind of hillbillies among elves. Still those hillbillies "surpased men as much as High Elves surpased themselves" or something like that.
>most skilled warriors in the setting are Men
Most exposed ones. There is no indication Turin was better than Fingolfin, Ecthelion or Glorfindel, even if they didn't get few chapters for themselves
>Elves are not less prone to corruption in the sense that they stand more of it, they simply can't conceive corruption unless it's something like the One Ring influencing them
If someone needs much bigger trigger to get corrupted, it basicaly means HE IS less prone to corruption
>And everything on which they were once better than Men, including their crafts, gradually decayed to be only a pale shadow of what it once was
[citation needed] and even if they were worse than they were before, still in late third age they still surpased men. And after third age, the setting ends.
>>47595032
The language of the Noldor, the High Elves, was banned by Thingol king of Doriath. Legolas would never have learned it, especially not so late into the third age.
>>47595104
>not hulk hogan with knife ears.
I FEAR NO MAN, NO BEAST, OR EVIL BROTHER!
>>47595161
Turin is fated to kill Morgoth, so it's pretty safe to say he's a lot better
And I don't know why I would need to give you a source when that is stated over and over and over again in the books. Everything gets worse the more time passes. Heck, even just the death of Feanor was a instant species-wide technology downgrade for Elves
>>47595230
>Everything gets worse the more time passes
Yet at the end of the third age elves, DESPITE compromising mostly of "lesser" wood elves produce goods and art still far beyond capabilities of men.
>>47595272
They're clinging to old knowledge that will eventually be gone anyways while not making any progress of their own. Meanwhile, Men eventually reach the modern world.
>>47595032
I can understand why they shifted his portrayal though. Mostly because they already had a gruff, no-nonsense guy in the form of Gimli. Books can parse out the actual differences in personality much better than movies.
The books are full of stuff which could never translate well into a film. Borimir is described as some fuckhueg Beowulf-looking dude. It took Aragorn, Gimil, and Legolas all their strength to lift him up and put him in a boat. Bear in mind all three far outmatch the physical capabilities of most people.
There's also stuff like Saruman's robes, or the fact Caradhras itself basically forced the Fellowship off the mountain and into Moria.
The movies overall are pretty good adaptations of the books. They manage to keep in the really important parts of the narrative while trimming the stuff which just wouldn't work in a movie.
Shit, half of the stuff in LotR wouldn't even work in a book if it were written by anyone else.
>>47595230
I'd say it's not because he's better, but because Morgoth fucked his family over so he gets the honour.
>>47595344
Aragorn is also xboxhueg, even more so than Boromir. He's described as being "tall as the sea-kings of old", so a conservative estimate would be around 7 feet
>>47595383
They're all beowulf style giants
>>47595343
While elves will be chilling with the Valar forevwer.
As I written, Tolkien expicitly stated that neither option was "better". Within the actual scope of the setting, elves never lose their edge over men. Elves were their better as long as they were a thing. After the elves dissapear, their mutual views and relations don't matter anymore
>>47595230
No it isn't. If he's fated to kill Morgoth, then all that means is that he's the one who will deal the final blow. Eowyn killed the Witch-King, does that mean she's a better fighter/warrior than Aragorn or Boromir?
>>47593403
Japanese elves are the worst. One-dimensional fap bait with no interesting lore or characters. Tell me about one interesting, japanese male elf. I'm waiting.I know that there was another post that replied to you. Where is it gone?
On the subject of Tolkien, I actually want to explore a concept that's been on my mind recently.
If a fantasy author wanted to revisit the Lord of the Rings setting, instead of bastardizing the Silmarillion, they could invent an entirely new story based around something that's ultimately left absent in the LotR's conflict: the East lands where the Easterlings come from.
What's over there that could be interesting?
>four of the seven dwarven kingdoms
>numerous new lands and human cultures
>the "dark" elves who might REALLY hate orcs
>the ocean
>TWO wizards known as the Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who are best bros
Tolkien elaborated that the Blue Wizards were directed to sow chaos and disruption among the Eastern empires to stem the flow of reinforcements to Middle Earth and give Middle Earth a fighting chance against the zerg rush Sauron was ushering in. Initially, Tolkien figured that since LotR panned out the way they did, if he ever wrote of them they'd have failed their mission, but later in life he suspected they might have played a significant, if not crucial, role in winning the War of the Ring.
Could you imagine that story? Two wizards fighting on land and sea, alongside dwarves, "dark" elves, and renegade humans to cripple Sauron's supply lines for his war efforts. It's pirates and rebels and guerilla warfare in LotR. That'd be a fucking great book if it's written well enough.
>>47595459
>Japanese male elves
They simply don't exist, anon.
>>47595383
Overall I think they did a good job communicating Aragorn and Borimir. Viggo Mortenson held himself like a natural leader, and they made him look more and more kingly as the trilogy went on. It helped he's a pretty tall guy.He almost died during filming of Two Towers, which unnerved Jackson because apparently Daniel Dey-Lewis was next in line to play the character. I guess he didn't relish the idea of an actor living on the Minas Tirith set for a year
Sean Bean likewise knocked Borimir out of the park. He's a big dude, and he looked like some seasoned warrior who was a cut above the rest.
Honestly the casting was pretty great overall. Elijah Wood was pretty young to play Frodo, but in the book Frodo spends like three decades fucking around in the Shire before he even starts his quest. That doesn't fly well in a movie.
Even Bloom worked, because even though he wasn't very true to Book!Legolas, he fit the common perception of an Elf to a T.
>>47595487
And this is the problem.
>>47595445
Even if you choose to interpret it that way, even being able to fucking HARM Morgoth even a tiny bit already gives him distinction. That would be ignoring his other individual accomplishments
>>47595512
I'm not seeing a problem.
>>47595230
Wasn't Turin the guy who knocked up his sister and killed himself?
>>47595524
Are you fearing male competition? Go back to your harem animes and your bland MC's that gets all the girls for no reason.
>>47595502
>he's a pretty tall guy
For you.
>>47595521
You mean doing something Fingolfin already did?
>>47595544
Túrin was a huge retard, so yes. He was also the guy that doomed Nargothrond.
>>47595544
Yeah, he's a pretty cool guy.
>>47595559
That's quite a bit of projection there, anon.
>>47595584
Fingolfin manages to "fight" Morgoth by not getting hit on the first place, it's over pretty quickly once he can actually get his hands on him. It's like a max level tank vs a glass cannon one third his level to put it on slightly stupid terms
>>47595459
My post got fuckin deleted..
>>47595627
Is this all you got? Throwing around words you don't know how to use? Evading my ad-homs with your ad-homs? Telling me that I like the thing that I heavily criticise?
How about this: you tell me what's so great about japanese elves in comparison to western elves.
>>47595717
This does not change the fact that Fingolfin wounds Morgoth several times during the fight, and even manages to get in another blow after being struck down.
>>47595747
You just posted the best example I could give.
>>47595756
So that means you're right assuming you were right in your first post, congratulations
>>47595459
I don't know, one of my other comment is also gone. But meh.
As for japanese elves. They are still better than the elves in Eragon, who are annoying pretentious and act like their "culture" is superior than anything that ever existed.
Personally on traditional fantasy (ignoring the Japanese MMO stuff that they throw out these days), I would love the elves to be a species that is different with a unique culture and origin no better than the other species that exists and not a "better human" race that they are always shown these days. Like this >>47595559 picture.
>>47595767
Isn't that Korean though?
>>47595843
Eh, it's all the same shit to me.
>>47595827
Did elves in Eragon even have a culture? Outside of being a bunch of vegetarian hippies with a superiority complex.
>>47595767
That comic is very obviously tongue-in-cheek.
>>47595827
>I dislike elves because I read Eragon
I have heard this so many times. Read the Silmarillion, this thread thread should show you why.
>>47595459
Earlier Western fantasy-based animes (Lodoss, Slayers, Berserk just off the top of my head) have decent interpretations of elbs of both genders.
The problem is a more encompassing one, at some point anime just up and decided to pander wholly to the trenchcoat-wearing, dakimakura-humping, cropped hentai-posting crowd, leading also to brown slut elves and such.
>>47592033
Fucking elves
>>47595827
Eragon doesn't represent western elves you retard.
>>47592033
It's just High Elves that are the problem what with their massive ancient cities and superior biology whatnot that they have for no reason. Elves in general should have been kept as the weird little pseudo fey people living in another dimension, casually throwing around magic spells for laughs, and being arbitrarily helpful or harmful towards individual humans based on if they think that person is an asshole or cool.
PCs should at most only be able to be half Elvish and it should just grant them some extra nature magic or hiding ability. Like how Tieflings work.
>>47595945
In all fairness, Eragan is a poor representation of the fantasy genre in general.
>>47595873
Well if you say it like that then no. No they don't.
Now that I think about it the main reason they live so long is because of some magical union they had with the dragons. Before they used to live shorter lives than humans if I remembered correctly.
A lost opportunity there if you ask me. This could have made the story better and the Eragon Elves better in general. He could have gone with humans, who are not big magic users and tend to rely more on mechanical weapons and tools in war. Then there are the Elves who live shorter than humans but rely heavily on magic. Then the long lived Dwarves in the mountain, etc etc etc.
>>47595850
I'm not really down for hitting everything with a broad brush. There's nebulous stuff like Eastern interpretation and Western interpretation, but these can be done poorly or pretty well. Dark Souls is western mythology and legend/myth bastardized by Japanese people, but it's damned neat and well done. Some Japanese shit westerners do is just awful and doesn't do justice to the source material at all. Chinese porn cartoons (especially the literal porn kind) are naturally not too interested with a faithful portrayal of the fantasy traditions they're borrowing.
As with all things, quality and craftsmanship are the deciding factor, and we should generally ignore garbage or at least acknowledge garbage for garbage even when it's quite prevalent.
>>47595225
Try imagining this guy with knife ears and without 'stache.
So Legolas looks like this in book? No wonder Gimli quite liked him, looks manly as fuck.
>>47596013
Some of the "problems" with Elves are further exacerbated by how much was lost in translation between the Tolkien--the codifier--and the various works which built off his stuff and eventually inspired modern RPG tropes.
I think a lot of people read/watched LotR and got the impression Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimil were meant to be player characters. This is of course a wrong impression. No one in LotR is really a PC, except maybe the Hobbits. But even that wouldn't fly in a real game because no player wants to spend half hte campaign getting escorted around by three Beowulf-expy DMPCs.
Honestly Tolkien is so far removed from actual RPG conventions it almost feels asinine to compare it.
>>47596128
Neither Aragorn nor the hobbits were meant to be PCs because there were no rpgs at the time
They all are equally eligible to be ones. RPG conventions are wide
>>47596107
He wasn't quite Hogan-tier levels, but he wasn't the slender ladyman people portray him as.
He was pretty beefy. But still able to walk on snow like it was concrete.
>>47596107
Well, there was also a kind of understanding there. Galadriel giving Gimli three of her hairs won Legolas over when Gimli told him. Legolas knew the story about that asshole who asked Galadriel for a strand of her hair three times but got rebuked every time, and now the queen of the elves and most beautiful creature in Middle Earth gives three to a dwarf.
It's the point when Legolas begins to believe that dwarves and elves can, indeed, be friends after all, and their relationship changes to a more friendly competitive one. The movies does a pretty good job of playing too that, though while in the movies Legolas soundly beats Gimli in the kill count, the books don't actually mention them counting kills (that I can recall) and they're actually pretty evenly matched on the battlefield. I mean, their whole relationship leads to Legolas building a boat for the two so they can be best bros forever in the elf lands beyond the world.
>>47593403
I liked Eragon. I also likes the Elves in it. I thought it was a good and logical point that when you and everyone around you exists forever you do well to not accidentally give anyone cause to hold a grudge. Their overly polite mannerisms might be grating to us, but we didn't grow up with that as a thing and we also don't have centuries ahead of us to fill, or centuries behind us to give us patience.
>>47595521
Luthien wounded morgoth when the magic blade she was using to pry out the Silmaril from morgoths crown snapped and smote him on the cheek.
The raiment of flesh that vala wear is not impregnable, since it is but flesh.
>>47596290
I thought it was Beren that did this. Lúthien danced and sung.
>>47592757
>Elves before him were the same as Greek fantasy; bunch of troublemaking faggots that do nothing good for humans.
You know nothing about elves pre Tolkien, do you?
>>47596421
Not him, but weren't Pre-JRR Elves part of Nordic mythology? They were basically creepy ubermensch or something, right?
I don't know where he's getting this Greek thing.
>>47596251
What do you mean "we" and "us". I didn't grow up the same way as you did anon and you didn't grow up the same way as I did. You are over generalizing here. There are human cultures were being polite is the thing. There are plenty of humans that are polite because they wish to avoid unnecessary conflict. You do not have to live for centuries to get this idea into your head. It is just common sense.
The problem with the Elves in Eragon is because of their annoying superiority complex believing their way is the right way. There is so many things wrong with the Eragon series in general but the Elves are probably the worst of the lot.
>>47596463
I dunno, the fact it was essentially a poor rewrite of Star Wars scared me off long before Tortellini described the Elves in any great detail.
>>47596249
They did count kills at Helm's Deep in the book too, with Gimli beating Legolas 42-41. In the movies they changed it to 43-42 for some bizarre reason.
>>47596612
> In the movies they changed it to 43-42 for some bizarre reason.
I think you can just chalk that up to them forgetting.
>>47596569
Well you made the right decision there. The ending is a huge disappointment. All that build up and fighting and the MC didn't even kiss the girl.
>>47595459
>Japanese elves are the worst. One-dimensional fap bait with no interesting lore or characters.
You might watch anime elves outside from Hentai.
>>47596013
>PCs should at most only be able to be half Elvish
>High Elves that are the problem what with their massive ancient cities and superior biology
>superior biology
>Creatures that live in a different dimension, with explicitly different biology, are able to breed with humans.
Half-elves shouldn't be a thing. I'm down for the elves messing with human biology with magic/tech, but that's as far as that shit should go.
>>47595468
Question is, did they fail or did they actually succeed? Imagine for a moment that they succeeded and the empire was still able to send what it did. Now imagine what would have been sent if they had failed. I'm not huge inot LotR lore, but the Easterling army that was sent was pretty small, to the point where Gondor, which has been at war for fucking ever, was holding its own against them and whatever army came out of Mordor. That seems like a really small force to be sent by an empire, even if they needed to keep some back so they weren't vulnerable.
>>47595873
Culture was all they sat around doing. They could get whatever they wanted by means of magic so they were freed up to pursue their personal whims. Half of Eragon's learning is reading poetry and philosphy, with a hint of history and science. I'm not sure how you people define culture, but "the ways of its people and their creations" is how I define it off the top of my head. They create nature themed art and are polite to the point of stuffiness. Culture.
>>47596027
Pretty sure their lifespans were on par with humans. Basically they were humans, but less violent and looked funny. There's a story of an elf cougar murdering her much younger cheating boyfriend. Paints them as pretty humanlike. There's also a character who was alive back then who constamtly bitches about how hoity toity the elves are in the present.
>>47596207
He said they were taken as PCs by modern readers/viewers, not they were written to be PCs.
>>47592033
I don't think elves would view humans as beneath them per se, however people don't enjoy being talked down to by someone younger than them, so elves are likely to get aggravated when a human 1/2 or 1/5th their age talks down to them.
>>47596692
Didn't Eragon become a vegetarian just because the Elves scoffed at him? Which coincided with Chrisboi's own brief turn to vegetarianism?
I think the issue people have with his Elves is less their stuffiness but more the fact the author clearly thinks they're always right.
>>47596612
yeah but we got that "that only counts as one" gag which was worth
>>47596463
Oh, I'm sorry, did you grow up in that setting? Have you centuries of experience behind you and centuries ahead of you spinning off to the end of the universe? I was under the impression that you were fucking human, and using the "us humans" and "we humans" implied terms of "us" and "we" since it I was discussing the differences between my race, humans, and your apparent race, elves. I humbly apologize for my foolish mistake.
>>47595920
>trenchcoat-wearing, dakimakura-humping, cropped hentai-posting crowd
>dakimakura-humping
That's the only buzzword you got right. Those companies don't give a damn about markets outside of the one that matters. The hardcore otaku in Japan, and only in Japan.
And it wasn't just decided for arbitrary reasons. Those people were the only ones still buying anime and it's related merchandise when the Japanese economy crashed in 90s. It can all be traced to that. It not only created an entire generation and culture of young men that felt alienated by society, but also created the only markets that kept anime afloat as an industry.
>>47596767
Tortellini please leave. No one here liked your books.
>>47596767
Is this how Eragon elves actually talk?
>>47596692
It'd be a huge exploration of that. The two Blues could be working to undo the corruption Saruman and Sauron's servants had been sewing there for generations, trying to rally the good men against these empires and holding them back from the lines or causing them to fall into infighting amongst themselves.
The amount of Easterlings sent to Middle Earth is strangely small, and that might have been due to the efforts of the Blues and their allies. I imagine they'd have formed a rebellion, a small but dangerous element of good men, dwarves, and possibly elves, to strike at vital targets of the Easterling empire, culminating in bringing down the empires themselves and stifling their ability to reinforce Sauron's side.
Tolkien mentions they did extensive cleanup work even after Sauron was destroyed, and never did return to Middle Earth proper. Was that because they were killed or did they manage to survive the conflict and perform cleanup successfully.
>>47596806
Sort of, they just use more flowery language.
>>47596855
I thought the big deal about Gandalf was that he was the only Istari to stay faithful to his mission? Saruman got corrupted, Radaghast went full hippy, and the Blue Twins disappeared.
>>47596569
>The hero's Journey belongs solely to Star Wars.
Anon.
>>47596674
Those exist? I've literally only seen elves as a character type in the "trapped in an mmo" shows or hentai stills posted on 4chan.
>>47596746
No. Eragon decided to hell with eating rabbit food and went with Saphira on her hunting trip. He went off on his own, found some bunnies, and killed them. He was about to eat them when he had flashbacks to his time meditating and how he had shared the mind of other rabbits and such. Since he had shared the mind of animals and understood howtey lived he humanized them to the point where he couldn't stand to eat them anymore. Later on he's at a feast thrown in his honor and the meat smells really good, so he justifies it to himself as not being rude and eats some. From then on he eats meat regularly, but nearly as much as before.
Again, that makes sense to me. There's a reason you don't name the farm animals you're gonna eat. Now imagine you not only have it named, but you've shared its mind and understand how it looks at the world. It'd probably be hard to dehumanize it to kill and eat it, even if it isn't a human.
>>47596894
That really depends on when you're asking Tolkien, like a whole lot of these things.
>>47596916
>muh Hero's Journey
Why do Eragon fanboys always think citing plot diagrams excuses scene-for-scene rehashes of storylines?
Like even on the Eragon wiki they flat out say "well it's okay for Eragon to rip off Star Wars because Star Wars just ripped off Dune"
>>47596855
Do you think they would have caused theempire to fall though? Other than Sauron's defeat I got the overall feeling that shit was futile and good was slowly losing. I mean that was a huge, bounding leap forward for good, but it was precipitated by a very long decline.
>>47596989
At some point you need to accept that anything you could possibly make can probably be cited as having been already done by someone else. The flavorful bits you put as the core of your work are what sets it apart. If one were constantly afraid of rehashes, then there wouldn't be content being put out.
>>47596931
>>47596894
Yeah. Tolkien originally said Gandalf was the only one to succeed, but later in life he said the two Blues could have instead played a big role, possibly a crucial one, in the War of the Ring while running their shit in the east. Basically, Gandalf and Radagast were supposed to be the guys keeping Middle Earth in check, and the Blues were sent to keep the east in check. The Blues were just doing their job but over in the east.
>>47596996
Consider that it seems like Middle Earth kind of settled down after the War of the Ring. Characters retire, they go home, Saruman has a couple of "fuck you"s left in him but he depletes those pretty quickly, and peace is generally restored. That shit wouldn't necessarily be possible if the east hadn't been pacified through some means, and I can be that the Blues and company would have had a big hand in whatever did manage that.
Really, I just want another LotR trilogy that creates some good, new material, not trying to stretch out Tolkien's work into a trilogy when it should have stood only a single book. The Hobbit should have been a single book, parallelling the structure of the books in the movies.
>>47596989
You claim that Eragon ripped it off scene for scene? Please demonstrate. Off the top of my head I can see "uncle was killed by bad guys" and "old man taught him while they journeyed on road." Both of which are key points of the hero's journey. I'm legitimately curious about the scene for scene rip off though.
As for citing hero's journey in loads of stories, that's just how things tend to pan out. Hero's Journey is vague, so it's able to be interpreted and applied to a variety of works. That's an established literature thing, so acting like it's a recent defense that gets brought all the time is pretty ignorant.
>>47596989
Hero's Journey is a legitimate story structure.
/a/ did a thesis on finding all the key elements in Boku no Pico, that has to mean something!
>>47597050
Anon there's a difference between flavoring out conventions and putting in no effort to differentiate your storyline. Obsessing over originality is a trap, but that doesn't excuse lack of imagination.
The first half of the Eldest series is functionally identical to Star Wars without any real attempt to make it much different.
Also Paolini's prose sucks so even if it wasn't something written a billion times before it'd still be unreadable.
>>47597063
Oh and "rescues pretty lady from jail." That's not exactly unique to SW either though.
>>47597061
Rhûn and Harad weren't all that pacified. Aragorn and Éomer were said to have fought several wars there.
>>47596916
How can you dehumanize animals when they are not even human to begin with anon? Humans are just another species of animals in the entire food chain. All I see is the author going "look how much better and right the Elves are. The elves are always right" and made Eragon accept it.
It is exactly what this anon said >>47596746. The author clearly thinks the Elves are always right and are basically shown to be "better humans".
>>47597120
I suppose that makes sense. It's possible the empires still had some taking down to do, and the Blues focus more on taking down and disrupting military targets instead of going after the empire proper.
Makes sense, too. What are a bunch of rebels going to do, kill the king and court and be done with it in a night? Considering Sauron fucked the place over for centuries his influence is probably going to linger for a while. Best just give the guys in Middle Earth a chance by breaking a few dams, poisoning a few wells, and participating in some privateering to keep them disrupted and at bay for a while longer.
Interestingly, if Gandalf's element is fire, and Radagast's is earth, the two blues, Alatar and Pallando, would represent Sea and Sky (respectively?), so acting on the high seas wouldn't be too out of character for them.
>>47597129
Let me try to make myself clearer.
Elves, and Eragon, spend time meditating and letting their minds connect to that of whatever is around them for funsies. Having shared in the lives of animals, they attribute more humanity to them than others do. They don't see animals as just animals. So, in their minds, they have elevated the worth of the animal's life much higher than we (humans) do. Eragon kolls the rabbit by connecting to its mind and pinching a nerve in the brain to kill it. Connecting to minds has some bleedover of memoiries sometimes, and with his meditations he has a bunch of bleedover. When he tries to eat the rabbit, memories of its life and of other rabbits' lives haunt him and he can't stop empathizing with this rabbit he killed when he didn't need to.
Now I'll eat meat all damn day until my arteries function about as well as New York traffic, but I can understand the reasoning behind his temporary vegetarianism.
>>47595032
>>47595104
Where did you all get this buff Legolas image from? All I can find from searching is
>"He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgul, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship"
Nothing about him being to bulky and such, but I don't have any sources directly from the trilogy because it's been a while since I read
>>47597308
Yeah, his reasoning is he got exposed to perfect elf magic which showed how perfect elves were for being so perfectly in tune with their surroundings.
>>47598051
I don't recall very much about what he actually looked like. Tolkien wasn't fond of overly long descriptions of physical characteristics. All we ever really got was a few throwaway lines about how Boromir was xboxhueg and capable of clearing away five foot snowdrifts with his bare hands. Or how Aragorn was likely a head and a half taller than most other people.
Legolas was probably the slimmest member of the Fellowship outside Gandalf and the Hobbits. But I doubt Tolkien imagined him as the waifish ladyman most artists portrayed.
>>47598072
Well, it's not like he's as well read as a genius like you, anon. Maybe if he had a computer he could also see how the elves were just giant pricks, and then he'd be half as great as you.
I really don't get where this "elves are too perfect!"complaint is coming from. It's acknowledged by everyone, Eragon included, that they were being bitches by hiding behind their wards and hoping Gally would die of old age. Hell, the elf smith outright says the elves are stuck up and pretentious shits who are too full of themselves. Where you get that he wrote them to be perfect is beyond me.
>>47596916
> There's a reason you don't name the farm animals you're gonna eat.
Sounds to me like someone's never worked or lived on a farm before.
>>47595230
Wasn't Eärendil's fate to kill Melkor?
The only elves who are portrayed as arrogant in Tolkien are also either villains or doomed (or both). Just saying.
>>47602070
No one's was. Melkor cannot be killed, he's a god. He was locked in a void by his fellows and will never return.
>>47592033
It's not arrogance, it's simply the understanding that most others are beneath them.
>>47597250
What is Sarumans element? Metal? That seems a bit too oriental desu.
>>47605189
Light, the element Gandalf embodied when he came back.
>>47605189
>>47607177
Though if we're going with the idea that peoples in LotR represent things more than what they literally embody in the story, I'd actually say the wizards embody religion.
Saruman representent the very strict structure of religion that was eventually corrupted and used to fan the flames of fanaticism. Gandalf, by contrast, represented the warm, comforting, more accessible religion that lives in home and hearth, the religion of people who live and seek out easy lives and want to get along with each other. Gandalf's death represents not just the loss of a main character, but a loss of faith with the peoples the story symbolically represents. His return shows that faith has rallied and been reborn, stronger than before and ready to supplant Saruman's corrupted message.
>>47595459
The Medicine Seller from Mononoke is the only japanese male "elf" I can think of.
>>47594099
I'd read Elizabeth Moon before I watched the LotR movies, so I already hated elves with every fiber of my being, but...
>I think they wanted to take the stuff from Tolkien they liked. They saw Elves, though they were cool, and threw them in without really paying attention to how they acted.
So they took the stuff about elves that they liked. I don't really see the problem.
>>47608061
I think what he's saying is they took all these aspects of the elves and slapped them on humans with pointy ears. The way the elves acted intrinsicly linked to their behavior, so ignoring the behavior is ignoring why those aspects worked like they did.
I swear every time I look at this thread the number of replies has gone down.
>>47608587
Apparently there was alot of deleting because of shitposters.. That may be why. But yeah alot of people just make humans with pointy ears, its lazy writing most of the time.
>>47596688
It's magic, I aint gotta explain shit. If I wanna fuck that human princess and get her preggers or make my wife fall in love with some guy I gave the head of a donkey, I'll damn well do it.
>>47592033
Tolkien's weren't, except some of Feanor's kindred who were clearly bad guys.
So why are they in most other settings?
First, you have some world-threatening evil rising.
Second, you have elves, written to be superior to humans in every way (unlike Tolkien, btw).
GM's and bad authors alike love to shove elven superiority, especially over player characters, into the player's or reader's face. Inevitably, the question comes up: if this evil is so bad, and the elves so much better than us, then why are we going on this adventure and not them?
Some GM's cut straight to arrogance. Others rely on mysteriousness. "We have our reasons". Which in shitty authors' hands amounts to the same thing. Worse really because the GM doesn't actually have a reason, he just wants to get the players off and adventuring.
To go back to OP's original question, it's worth remembering that Tolkein didn't invent elves; they were a thing in European mythology for a long-ass time, both in ancient germanic legends where you have the Alfar, and also in Celtic mythology as the Tuatha de Danaan, and then in the Middle ages where the two had been thoroughly mixed up and had a bit of Judeo-Christian mythology mixed in, becoming ex-angels who were punished with exile from Heaven but weren't considered evil enough to banish to hell along with Lucifer. then you've got the likes of Shakespeare and Spencer portraying the elves as decadent royalty interfering with mortal affairs for shits and giggles.
Tolkein took from all those interpretations when he created his elves, as did subsequent authors, so it's no surprise that Elves would end up as arrogant when their "source material" includes ex-gods, divine beings and fey royalty.
Then you've got Moorcock's Melnibonean's, elves by any other name, who take all that previous material and add a dose of British post-Imperial guilt, so that they ended up as a not-British Empire, ruling the world, treating the younger races as little more than children at best. Moorcock's work was a huge influence on GW back when they were starting out, so naturally GW elves borrowed heavily from the Melnibonean's
