~Marie Silver~

"Eragon" and "Eldest" have many flaws, this is true. Their elves ARE quite cliched and they were one of my peeves about the books. However, the Inheritance trilogy is not all that bad in my opinion. I actually enjoyed them. There are certain cliches that are acceptable if they fit within the story. The reason that they became cliches is they were over-done, yes? And if they were over-done, then they had to have been popular at one time, no?

Of course, right now I am in an accepting mood. It really does depend on the reader's state of mind and level of tolerance for things. There are days when I lay books aside in disgust at the cultures described, having seen the exact same thing one too many times.

What's your own opinion, Marie Silver?

~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings

Personally I do like elves. I don't see them so much as a Tolkien rip-off as a staple of fantasy. As you mention I like elves that have known characteristics but with a spin. My elves aren't peaceful, nature loving people and the elves in one place have different values to the elves in another. One of my main characters is an elf who's become jaded and when he comes across a dying woman he decides to leave her. While his personality might not be typical of the elves back in his homeland I wanted to give this character his own individual identity (if that makes sense).

~Marie Silver~

...and the elves in one place have different values to the elves in another. Yes! This is something that is not mentioned enough! Races do not have only one ruler, one set of rules, one religion. There are variences within races (hey, just look at the human race!) and they would be split up into different groups within themselves. Many authors seem to think that they can have only three countries in their world (ruled by dwarves, elves and humans) and that all of the citizens of each country all are exactly the same and each race is radically different from the other. It is the similarities that hightlight the differences...

What story is your character featured in? He sounds very similar to an idea I once had, but threw away. I'd like to see how you did it and see if I can't revive my own idea...

~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings

I happen to have six different elven races running alongside humans and dwarves. They all share a common deference to each other because they're distant kin, but they almost NEVER get along... ever since they split up over a large argument over how to treat the younger races back near the beginning of time.

I think it all depends on what you do with them. I happen to like the idea of sea faring elves. It's something I haven't seen before. Keep it up.

Girlbrainiac

Sounds like a good idea. Is the story based upon the elves or are they just a part of it?

I'll have a read of 'Ocean's of Tears' Gryphon because, as Girlbrainiac mentions

I happen to like the idea of sea faring elves. It's something I haven't seen before.

The elf character I've mentioned is in my story 'The Dark Witch' but he isn't in any of the chapters I've posted and I doubt I'm going to update anytime soon either.

Btw, I'm named him 'Lel'. What do you think of the name? Clichéd? I thought it might be too similar to Legolas but since he has totally different personality I didn't think it mattered.

~Marie Silver~

For example, if a half-elf of one race is met by a fullblooded elf of another race, the way the half-elf is treated depends entirely on the particular elven culture. A mountain elf might try to kill the half-elf. A prairie elf might not have the time of day for them. A valley elf might treat them like kin... and so on.

Girlbrainiac

I like that idea, quite original. What kind of values do the different elven cultures have?

~Marie Silver~

The ones that eventually became the mountain elves saw the other races as being beneath them, meant to be dominated by the older and wiser elves.

The prairie elves took a more 'live and let live' approach. Leave them alone, and they'll leave us alone. They don't really care for outsiders. Any intruder on their land will be 'escorted' from their homeland.

The wood elves decided to give the other races a chance to prove their friendship, but made few efforts to reach out. Theirs is more of a 'let them come to us' approach.

The valley elves are the friendliest of the elven peoples, dealing freely with every other race, and famous for their hospitality.

Two other elven races emerged later, split from the existing ones.

From the mountain elves came the frost elves who, unlike their kin, are a bit kinder to travellers. They live in the tundra, though, so they don't often get visitors.

From the valley elves came the desert elves. While they're just as willing to have dealings with the other races, they're not nearly so good as their kin.

(A note on mating: since everything was created by the Spirits, everything can theoretically mate and produce fertile offspring so long as they share a few simliarities when the conception took place, i.e. two humanoids such as a gnome and a dragon in human guise, though that's pretty unlikely, but it can happen. The only sterile race are the vampires, because they are cursed humans.)

Crud, I'm rambling...

Ok, I admit it... I only like them because I like to draw them.

Essentially, they are a people with the power of shifting the shape of things. In the past, they mostly lived on this big island, which had this sort of wellspring of magic beneath it. They called it the Fountain of Life, since living in proximity to that much of their own type of magic made them long-lived. While they are not shape-shifters themselves, they were able to Change aspects of their own bodies as well as the things around them. However, doing so required quite a lot of magic, so the changes were generally small. They were very powerful and once they'd mastered the changes to their own homeland, they started seeking out other things to work their magic on. To do so, they created what I call Living Ships. They are boats made from still living trees which have to be maintained by the elves on board. They sailed their ships to other places, but discovered that the magic of their homeland did not extend past a certain perimeter. So they started abducting things from the lands to bring back to their own, namely various creatures. They would send out the ships, the sailors would capture the animals and some humans, and bring them back to the Island City. There, they would work their magic on the people and animals, experimenting with them and then take them back to their own lands and set them loose upon the world to see if they'd survive.

It got to the point that the elves started to think of themselves as being close to gods, with the power of creating their own living things, (though they really only changed already living beings). They were extremely vain and their appearance, dark-skinned, black hair, dark-blue eyes, and pointed ears along with relatively tall physique, was a result of the latest fashion that was sweeping the island, when suddenly, and with no warning, the Fountain of Life ran dry. The Island City had been tampered with so much that without the support of the magic, the island collapsed into the sea. Only the sailors, which were generally the people with the weakest natural magic, living, as they sailed on their Living Ships.

When the island sank, a lot of magic was released into the ocean, which eventually, through osmosis, spread throughout the rest of the world. The elves had been living with magic for so long that they now needed it to survive. As a result, if an Elf cannot at least partially submerge him or herself in water every few days, they will start to get sick and eventually die.

Anyways, thats my take for now. If anyone has any critiques to offer, that would be appreciated.

~Marie Silver~

~ Evil Minion #2

PS: I'm sorry again! I screwed up! You did NOTHING wrong, at all!

My own elves aren't immortal and not total tree huggers, but they still have Tolkien influences. And they don't have internal magic, either.

If you have dwarves, please, please keep them away from the weapon making, clans and beer! Dwarves being miners is not only a historic thing, but a logic one. But, the idea of them always being Gimli is even more annoying than the classic Tolkien elves. They NEVER change form series to series. At least elves are sometimes villains and sometimes live in deserts, but dwarves, dwarves must ALWAYS have the same staples.

Some random thoughts on elves:

I remember playing a game once that had a rather funny expert in a book in the game. The expert was talking about how animals evolve to become more perfect to suit their environment, and how they evolve through generations. Then, it mentions that elves have long life spans, and therefore, don’t need to evolve anymore, because they’re already perfect.

And, elves are so fun because of how fantasy culture has made their styles of dress and their ears. The minion enjoys drawing elves.

Once again, so sorry, the minion knows it probably took a lot of work to make that post, and, can never really do anything to make up for it.

Elves in big cities? A bit ironic really since it'sd make so much sense with their long lives for their population to grow faster than humans...

Even more ironic since a little project I had a while ago I recently decided to revise completely (by killing off ALL the elves) had a human city that was being contained so they didn't destroy the enviroment, and grew to the city limits, but wouldn't stop growing and the elves wouldn't let them them go any farther out, so they built up, until they reached the heigth limit put on by flying cities. Then thery got even more cramped, and tried to start a war with the elves, but got their butts handed to them. So, they tried researching difficult modes of power, and accidently tapped into a dimension with demonic beings (hessitate to call them that, since they're just beings derived form chaos, and not evil, pain loving things.) But, that project's gone with the disappearance of the elves in my world.

And Shadow, I remember from your post I accidently wrote over (sorry yet again!) you mentioning that there were 'power-hungry' elves and lore keeping elves... care to expand on those? Government types? ideals on life and death? etc? Just curious how closely they resemble Warcraft elves.

Which is why I've made it much harder for them to concieve than humans can. For my elves, there's about two and a half centuries of their life span where they can produce children. An especially productive Elven couple will pop one out every fifty years or so of that time. Twins are almost unheard of, and FORGET triplets.

Compare this to humans who can have a child every two years (about, not quite) for twenty years, plus don't live as long...

In 250 years time, when you're on the fifth child of the second elven generation, the fifth child of the third generation, and the first child of the fourth generation, the humans could be on their twelfth generation, and have up to 1,000,000,000,000 kids related to each other by the same distant ancestor, and 100,000,000,000 of their parents. (This is, of course, assuming the maximum production, and not taking into account any that might not produce as many, nor those that die before they can reproduce, etc.)

You get my point, though.

Girlbrainiac

But i think elves can be effectively used when they are turned from that common ideal of an all knowing people. Taking what people generally regard as the personified epitome of humanity and turn them into a flawed people. (more often than not elves are flawless except for the occasional tendency for arrogance, yet that comes from a human perspective of seeing elves justified in their arrogance considering what they have compared to humans.)

My advice for using elves though is to make sure they aren't there just for the sake of having elves in your story. If their purpose can be filled by just another human culture then it is generally better to have them be humans instead. However, elves can be used well to show contrast to human culture, and to give the readers the knowledge that these people are different from humans and allows a reader to better compare them with the humans of your story.

For example, in one city, they decided that the human population was spreading too quickly, and fenced them in. This turned extremely bad when the humans kept reproducing, and started running out of land to build on.

I don't know, the minion has aleays loved the idea of elves being the anatagionists instead of allies.

And on the note of oppresion, I've made my elves pretty low on the pecking order. They are pretty sophisticated, but the humans are more numerous. The elves are a bit smaller physically also, so they are a little easier to bully.

Tolkien, I think, took the elves to the nature of being sophisticated. Before that they were pretty much baby-stealing, people-abducting, fairy-ring-making little buggers. (don't quote me on Tolkien making the change... I could be very wrong on that...) That's probably why he is the setter of the bar and everyone else is simultaenously trying to imitate and avoid blatently copying him - except for those people who just don't care.

*sigh* Poor elves. They are so abused. And dwarves are never used enough... What's up with that?

And, that view on the evolution of elves pretty much sums it up. Elves had little to no culture before Tolkien came, and were seen as children story staples, kind of like villains in black top hats, with goatees and handlebar mustaches in modern views.* Sure, Tolkien didn't invent elves, but he made people have interest in them (though Record of the Lodoss War is to blame for the common anime elf ears.) Kind of similar to Bill Gates and computers.

Dwarves are neglected, because no one’s come up with anything original to do with them yet. At least elves have stemmed a little away from the trees and wise old mentor feel into more humanism characters (if used right,) dwarves remain virtually the same as they were when more mature fantasy became popular due to Tolkien’s works. The minion's guess on why most people don't like using and expanding on dwarves is they don't look very pretty in chainmail bikinis and leather.

The minion honestly doesn’t like typical tree-loving elves due to her personal views on the world and “naturalists”, thus they turn into antagonists in her mind when the follow the staple formula.

*That stems another rant. We need more facial hair on older characters in fantasy! I want beards, five o’clock shadow and mustaches!

Me agreeing way mucho with the facial hair. Beards forever! Young men are so proud of their beards when they first start to come in, but then all fantasy heros are cleanshaven. The Gryphon wants some manly men with facial hair. *drools* Long hair is nice, but when you put it on a girly man, it all slides downhill from there. Manly men with long hair and trim beard/stubble... *drools more*

That's why dwarves are pure awesomeness. They have beards! Go facial hair! We should start a thread on dwarves and see how many people will chime in with original ideas for dwarves. An excellent turn away from the stereotypical dwarf was Mulch Diggums in the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. He still likes gold and digs, but he certainly is not what you expect when you think dwarf. He actually is built to be underground. (If anyone here hasn't read that series, I highly recommend it...)

The minion dosn't know where she'd start on a board for dwarves, considering she's rarely found many beyond the cliche ones and RA Salvatore's dwarves (she actually likes the way he handled them, though would prefer it if ALL of his charater's weapons were dwarf made.) Therefore, the minion leaves Gryphon to start.

I guess my main thing would be to have those dwarves, which we HEAR like to hang out underground, stay underground. They always seem to be coming overland to help their overland buddies. RA Salvatore had a whole epic happen underground (the Dark Elf trilogy) why can't we do so with dwarves? Gimli, Snow White, they all seem to talk about being underground, but never do...

Before Tolkien: you say "elf" and people think of Santa Clause or Rumplestilskin.

After Tolkien: you say "elf" and you think hippy "one with nature" elegant sexy people with pointy ears.

I'm not saying Tolkien invented elves, but he did invent the moddern mental restrictions on the word. Very few people use it in any other context than his, and usually base their culture off his.

It's like... like... Blade Runner and the sight of the future being gritty.

Blade Runner was one of the first science fiction movies to even dare depict the future as anything but brand new, sleek, shiney, and clean. Even though most scifis still don't make the future as gritty as Blade Runner did, it shaped the movie genre in the attention to the small detail of dirt and nautral wear and tear on objects.

And, due to this point of view, I honestly can't see people using elves similar to Tolkien's and claiming they're not copying him because "there were elves before him" as being a very good exscuse. Just admit that Tolkien influanced your work, and call it good.

Sure, you can write what you want, and nobody can stop you. That doesn’t mean people are wrong to criticize the short fallings of a genre.

All stories have been told before. Nothing is 100% original in it's making. However, that doesn’t give people an excuse to borrow blandly with out using the same reasoning behind the making of the creature. People generally rant and disapprove of clichés because they have been done so many times before, many of the attempts lacking quality.

Though, if your writing for yourself, you shouldn't care about the opinions of the general public or the results in parodies.

Too many people hate cliches and don't read stories because of the mildest hint of a cliche. We need to open our minds and stop ignoring stories, possibly well-written, because of an idea that has been use before. I know that this website is just a small example of the population but guys, if you don't like it then just leave it alone. Don't go around criticizing it.

This is how the minion sees elves in fantasy. She believes it's alright to design and make red sweaters in private, kudos to the craft! But if the designer plan to try to show it off it to the general public, and they say they've seen too many, they're not being rude, they're expressing there general opinion on the art repsented to them.

And, the minion highly reccomends reading over both pharagraphs and thinking it over. She had quite a few things to say about the post as a whole, but after a few minutes of thinking about it, decided against it to get rid of her trolling habits.

The minion should also appologise for her earlier post. Found herself quite riled up in her opinion, and started taking things away from the normal ettiquette of debate. Instead of editing out those details, she's just going to leave it be and say she should have taken a fifth-teen minute break to get her head away from her disapproval of the view.

Geez, you'd think people get over this.

This is one of the few times I hate the LOTR, as it showed the WRONG opinion of elves. Few people know that elves were only portrayed without much fault in LOTR!!! In other works, their faults are shown as they are more incorporated in the story. People got the wrong idea of LOTR, but as they didn't read the "Fall of Gondolin" or "The Childrin of Hurin."

Elves also were originally called Gnomes in the Land of Valar. They were called elves in Middle-Earth. (i'm sorry if I am only reinforcing someone elses point, but I have no time to read that many posts)

Also, why are elves woodland people? Why can't they be sea people for once. Atlantis maybe?

The minion generally has a rule with herself. She never shows anything she plans to try selling in the future on forums of any type.

Not to mention the minion's a little paranoid.

Isn't that what a drow is? (If that's what they're called.)

~Marie Silver~

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