Now you're either getting irrelevant or you're completely missing the point.
"Tolkien elves" refers to what you see in classic "medieval fantasy". The Santa Elves are only mentioned as an example of something that doesn't belong to the "classic medieval fantasy elf" class.
If you don't like the terms I use, too damn bad!
I'll ignore this post and hope you figure out what you're talking about.
My point is that you're acting like those are the only two possible meanings of the word elf... you're acting as though, if someone writes a story about "elves", it's either going to be Tolkien's ethereal forest people or Santa's industrious midgets. I'm not arguing with the terms you use at all... the terms you use are fine, for what they represent. What I'm arguing about is your insistence in acting like all elves that could be written about would fall into one of these two categories.
My point is that elves don't have to be anything like Santa's or Tolkien's, and can still legitimately be called elves. If people are going to have certain assumptions about elves... so be it. A skilled writer can even turn that to his or her advantage, by playing on the audience's assumptions. If they expect elves to have a reverence for life, only to find out that elves are cruel, capricious, and hold human life in no particular regard, that makes the discovery all the more shocking. If instead of elves, you have namethazines, they won't be shocked when they find out the namethazines are cruel, because they had no expectations. They'll just file the information away and move on. And for the record, if I found myself reading about (or in) a land that I'm told is filled with elves, I'd make no assumptions about them. "Elf" means too many things. It's like telling me it's full of animals. Tame animals, wild animals, dangerous animals, herd animals, predators? | |
It's got nothing to do with your views, but the manner in which you explain and advance them.
Your original point was that everyone used the same races, elves and dwarves, in their "medieval fantasy games," correct? My point is that "elf" and "dwarf" are just words... my elves aren't the same race as your elves any more than if we, working independently, happened to each create a race and name it krysantine. Your objection to "elves" and "dwarves" springs from your own inflexibility... you cannot help but think of wee people in red and green or tall, graceful immortals when you hear the word "elf." You said yourself that if you heard about a land full of elves, you'd have an immediate picture in your head of what they'd look like... if that's so, then for all you actually know, anyone who uses elf could be incredibly original and it's just you assuming that they're borrowing from Tolkien. | |
GateGuardian wrote:
Now you're either getting irrelevant or you're completely missing the point. /folklore faerie elves tolkienesque santas_helpers Tolkien elves and Santa's little craftsmen might be separate classes of "elf", but they're both derived from the same long-standing folklore. Sure, you can say "scrap the whole folklore base", which I imagine is what you're getting at here, and it's a good point--but you can't say "Tolkien elves" to mean "elves as represented in centuries of folklore, predominantly in Northwestern Europe but also similar folk creatures in other cultures throughout the world" and use "Santa's elves" as an example of a separate class, and if you use "Tolkien elves" only to mean elves as represented in post-Tolkienian literature, then you're not hitting the root of the problem, which was that prior to Tolkien there were still elves prior to Tolkien and some traits of "Tolkien elves" were derived from these earlier, folklore-based elves. | |
In most of the medieval fantasy things I've known, elves DO fall under two basic categories. "Classic medieval fantasy elves" (the new, and longer term) or "Something else" which was represented by Santa's elves. But most people think "Classic medieval fantasy elves" when thinking of elves in medieval fantasy.
If you're writing a story and your goal is to shock the audiance, then making elves that aren't what you'd expect (or something to the same effect) would work great. But I'd still like to see something new. I, for one, like the element of learning about a new race that isn't based on anything else. Even though it somehow got onto that point, the name isn't the big thing, it's what the race is about. The point is that everyone still uses generic race concepts, and there is very rarely anything new or original out there. And for the record, I HAVE seen fantasy worlds with races that didn't match anything I was familiar with, and to my knowledge, that's usually (okay, well sometimes) everyone's (all the fans) favorite race. | |
Some people need to learn that agressive conversations more often lead to flame wars [yes, THAN] useful results.
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GateGuardian wrote:
Some people need to learn that agressive conversations more often lead to flame wars and useful results. Hee hee--nice Freudian slip. Not great, though, because the rest of it does remain true. | |
I think the lack of anything distinctly "elven" goes to the metaphysical worldview... Japan has household helpers and guardians, for instance, but it ties them into the concepts of ancestor worship and the idea that inanimate objects have spirits or souls, so you end up with something entirely different than brownies or the shoemaker's elves.
When I think of Japanese elves, I think of the hengoyakai (sp?), the spirits of the forest that could assume human and animal forms. Mysterious, mischievous, greedy, manipulative, playful, tied to the natural order of things, and yet apart. Look at the roles they play: otherworldly seducer, sneaky thief, warner, protector... they're often seen to greatly reward humans who selflessly come to their rescue or otherwise aid them, and punish those who are greedy or self-serving. Not a perfect "match" for elves, but I think it would be fair to say that elves and such spirits may be the same beings/concepts, viewed through different cultural lenses. | |
And for the record, I HAVE seen fantasy worlds with races that didn't match anything I was familiar with, and to my knowledge, that's usually (okay, well sometimes) everyone's (all the fans) favorite race. Granted. But... and this is the big but... that doesn't mean that you could automatically make the whole game better by making every race something so completely new. For instance, if a game has humans, elves, dwarves, troll, and jherani, everyone's going to try the jherani out, just to see what they are. If the jherani are portrayed as being a mysterious and secretive race, the fact that they have an unfamiliar name is also going to work for you. If the game has klivar, mongids, teranians, shlbuths, and jherani, you're going to see three things happening. 1) A lot of people are going to pick whichever one is the first on the list (personal experience, from Miner League, where all the races have gibberish names). 2) In the absence of a good, solid first impression, roleplaying is going to suffer, particularly in an online computer game. In a P&P RPG, where you have to sit down and look through the book at least a little anyway, you can get a chance to know the race in depth before you try to roleplay it. In an online game, less information is going to be provided, and less players are going to spend the time necessarily to read it, and there will be less time before first reading and immersion. Instead of thinking as klivar as the devious race, they'll be thought of as the race that gives you the most intelligence and dexterity bonuses. Instead of thinking as shlbuths as the peaceful race, they'll be thought of as the lousy fighters. 3) After you get an established crowd going, you'll see conversations like this: newbie: what are kilvars? oldbie: their like elves. Sad but true. | |
GateGuardian wrote:
Some people need to learn that agressive conversations more often lead to flame wars [than] useful results. Very true. Do keep in mind, though, that it takes two to keep a debate going. If it's devolved past the point of usefulness, you can stop participating and help bring it to a halt. | |
When I last hosted WOLQ, I had someone come in and start assessing my work. It went a little something like this:
"*groan* This is just like every other MUD on the face of the earth!" "Hey, how come you don't pick your race and then a class? That's not right!" "Where are the guilds? How am I supposed to use training points if there's no guilds? And why can't I see how many training points I have?" And so on. The point is, once you've decided that something is just like everything else, or everything is like one thing... you're going to ignore all evidence to the contrary. As soon as you see: Pick your race: A) Human B) Dwarf C) Elf D) Ogre you stop paying attention to the details, because you already have all the information you need. It doesn't matter if dwarves in this world are great wizards, elves are repulsed by salt, or ogres can change shape at will, you'll still think of it as "generic", if you even get past the login screen to look around. | |
Yes, but the elf by any other name would still be repulsed by salt. Call the elves Jimmy and the ogres MacDougall... they're still just names.
The beginning and ending of my point is this: whether a race is a valuable addition to a world has nothing to do with its name and everything to do with what the race represents... and that a race's name is one of the smallest aspects of its originality. | |
That's just die to laziness on the player part. If the game required that you fill out a little quiz on what each race was, you'd get a lot less players and people would make intelligent choices!
I looked at Leftley's game, Treasure Seeker (I think), and I it reminds me a bit of this case. Not that they all have weird names, but in that game there are quite a few different classes to choose from. Most people playing haven't the slightest clue what the difference is between a scout and a ranger, or a scholar and a teacher (okay, I made those up), so when you choose a class, it gives you a short description of what that class is all about, and asks you if it's really what you want. I think that's an excellent way of doing it, assuming we're talking about games here! Since most muds don't put too much into quality to begin with, I don't really care if an average mud has elves, dwarves and dragons in it, since most of the mud is probably a bunch of stock anyway.' What irritates me is to find a mud with tons of documentation, information on just about anything you could want having to do with the world, and finding a race list that includes twenty unique races, like your example, then at the end of that it also lists "elves". That just, ruins the feel. If someone created a mud that requires you actually put effort into your character before you decide to play the game, then people who are interested in playing would take the time to read a bit about those destinctive races. So, I think the effect of having a bunch of weird races would be pretty much up to the designer. It could be handled well, or it could screw up the game completely! But I personally think much higher of someone who creates something based totally on original concepts, rather than just taking ideas because people are familiar with them. | |
I have a nagging feeling now that we're both talking about the same thing, but haven't a clue what the other is talking about.
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I agree with everything in that post... except, I'd think higher of someone capable of making a totally original idea. As you say, it depends on the effect the designer is trying to achieve.
I have games and stories with totally original concepts, I have creations that draw almost entirely from folklore, I have projects that are based completely on capturing the feel of a genre (and thus are as "genre-eric" as you can get.) I encourage people to make original things, because until you do, until you can, all you're doing is imitating. Once you know how to create, from scratch, though, there's nothing wrong with exploring formulas and archetypes. They're just another tool in the hands of the artist. | |
If what you're saying is true in your case, then the best bet would be to get things catagorized into something that's not common in fantasy worlds.
I'll figure out something else to say about it later.