Why elves?

[darkelf105]

I have been blathering quite a bit lately. Of course, I’ve been blathering about the Broken Lands comic because I happen to inhabit the world of Shasta Daisy and Hanali and Silvanost and Khale, a lot. An inordinate amount of my creative energy is spent adventuring with a certain blue half-fiend and his pals. So naturally, I must share with the world because when I love something, everyone else is required to love it too. Or at least pretend they care.

 

However, to my dismay, as I’ve babbled endlessly to a few D&D loving, epic fantasy adventure reading acquaintances online, I’ve found that quite a few people hate, absolutely hate, elves. I mean with the sort of passion that will turn them off of a series, or web comic in my case, as soon as the elves show up. This of course makes me cry. I lurv elves. I mean, really, really, love elves.

 

 Sure, a story with good elf characters is hard to find. Elves can become cliché real quick, I’ll admit; but there’s something so awesome about elves, that I find most of my story lines either have one as a main character and/or involve them seriously in the plotline.  

 

This surprises people who know me and know what I like to read. Elves are usually the province of sixteen year-olds. I’ve learned this. Give a sixteen year-old an elf and they’ll be in love. It’s not hard to see why. Elves, in fantasy fiction, are generally portrayed as beautiful and otherworldly. They do angst better than, say, dwarves or orcs. They have pointy ears and maybe wings and are often in possession of outrageously colored hair and eyes. They are, in short, the rock stars of the fantasy genre.

 

Being a rock star is hard.  People are fickle. The sex appeal, the fucked up escapades, the weird clothes and bad lines, as we get older, we tolerate them less (or at least I do), especially if these things are cliché and not well done. Unfortunately, elves as a fantasy character race are guilty of all those things. Plus, they’re pretty, and I’ve learned that for many, many authors (and fans) being beautiful often serves as characterization. And, like many readers who are not sixteen, I am not fooled. Beautiful does not automatically mean I will care. It is not a substitute for a real personality, especially if the writer happens to pair angst with it. I play Japanese RPGs to get beauty and angst in a format that is much more supportive of this pairing. In novels, this doesn’t work as well, mostly because a video game doesn’t NEED much content to get the story off and running and still be entertaining whereas as novel does.

 

So this brings me to my point, I love elves for all of the reasons that a sixteen year-old does. They’re exotic and pretty and angst-y and brooding and heroic.

 

I also love them for the same reasons I love house cats. Cats are also angst-y and brooding and proud and beautiful. They can also be cruel. And they come in all shapes and sizes, but no matter how large or small or what color, are still undeniably cats. Just like good elven characters. But cats are also just plain weird. And I love them for that, and to me the best elven characters must also wear the cloak of the bizarre around them. And often times they don’t which is why I think they can be such a turn off for some readers.

 

A cat falling into an aquarium is hilarious on many different levels. It’s a cat and it’s wet, so it’s making funny, grumpy faces and trying its best to maintain its dignity. It’s also funny because cats are beautiful majestic creatures that are known for their grace and agility, but because this is a cat and it shouldn’t have been on the edge of the fish tank batting at the fish, falling into the tank makes it doubly hilarious, especially because you and I know that the cat never, ever thought that it would end up in the tank. Cats just don’t think like that. Schadenfruede? Hex yeah. But I’m also five sometimes and so are a lot of us.

 

And see, and elf falling into a fish tank or other such similar situation, would be funny and awesome for the exact same reasons that it is for the cat.

 

I like elves because they are humanoid house cats. I like cats because they are cute, but they’re also weird and really, really psychotic.  And the elves I read about or create are also like this. The best elven character I’ve adventured with lately has got to be Yorsh from Silvana De Mari’s The Last Dragon. He puts on a wedding dress because it is pretty and wears it around in all seriousness. This has my vote for the_awesome. He also does a lot of other laugh out loud things. It’s a great children’s book and Yorsh is a great example of how awesome cats, I mean, elves, can be.

Comments

[i-renovated.livejournal.com]

loved this. I'm one of those people who grew tired of elves in my old age...probably for the same reasons you mention. People write them too damn cute. More often than not, there's some broodiness, but so domesticated it feels like reading "Elves" by Precious Moments. puh-leeze, so over it.

And that's the other thing, if they are appropriately angsty, brooding and dangerous--they're usually so damn perfect it sickens. Now, falling into the fish tank (or the equivalent) and wearing the wedding dress (snicker), that I could groove on...

I think it is possible--and inspired--to be super-human, brooding, dangerous, pretty, heroic and...flawed. I like *your* elves.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

And that's the other thing, if they are appropriately angsty, brooding and dangerous--they're usually so damn perfect it sickens.. That's it exactly!

Which is why rokk_lobster and I are trying really, really hard to make our elves unique and quirky but still essentially elves.

I highly, highly recommend The Last Dragon. It's a quick, incredibly funny, but it was also really poignant, at least for me, but I can be a sap so it's hard to tell if it's poignant or just Hall Mark-y.

Tomorrow I think I'll do some inking of Ryan's character profiles for Shasta Daisy, Khale and Captain McFlinty....if I don't screw it up horribly, I might share.....this whole comic thing is brand new for me and I am so floundering about without a life preserver.

[i-renovated.livejournal.com]

oooo. share! share!